


It's Vast Magic

by NoRezNoHealzJUSTGUN (StolenVampires)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Culture, Dom/sub Undertones, Edgeplay, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I dunno man I just wanted a lotor smut fic, Is this reader insert?, Master/Slave undertones, Morally Ambiguous Character, No redemption, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Smut, Stockholm Syndrome, Survival Tactics, Tags Are Hard, chapter 8 is where things heat up, hacking dang alien dongs, hella alien dick, smut in ch 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 05:40:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 48,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11753208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StolenVampires/pseuds/NoRezNoHealzJUSTGUN
Summary: An exploration gone awry; The first mission since Kerberos that would push the limits of what humanity could do as it chased a radio signal from an unknown source at the edges of the Sol system. Chasing a dream it ends with deaths, captivity and a new opportunity. To serve an imperial prince from space who seeks to destroy his enemies by using their own natures against them.  A choice given she accepts her place under him, and realizes just how much more space has to offer than stars and the unknown.Part 1 of  Series





	1. Choices are made before they are given

There is something magical about space.

When one looked up at the stars, without the haze of light, the cover of clouds, or the layer of ozone, you could feel like you were gazing into eternity. A vastness that you were both a part of and yet so utterly small and insignificant. As a child, looking up into that was a dream. To reach up and touch space, to see a star’s dying light, to see worlds unknown and new and a future untainted by anything. Space was magic in the most pure and base of form.

And it felt like magic when she was told she had passed her final exam at the Galaxy Garrison. Space was so near now. So close. She was ready, she had trained and learned and fought for this. To touch the stars, to see what so few would even be able to fathom. She didn’t mind when she was assigned to be the lead programmer and engineer for an exploration mission. She didn’t care that it meant she wouldn’t pilot or rescue or have accolades when she got back. Seeing space, to be able to be a part of it all, would be enough.

Their ship went up, and she cried in her seat. Everyone had so many emotions, so many hopes and fears. All she could feel was joy. Utter joy as her dreams were becoming reality. Days passed quickly in space she found. Even when working, even when she looked out into the vast glittering darkness time moved faster than she knew, and soon, they reached the far corners that mankind had never seen.  
She was the first one on deck.  
The first one to see stars that no other human had seen. 

But space in all it’s magic, is not harmless. The stars that burn are not always warm. They can be painful in their intensity, they can hide what is right in front of you.  
They can hide an enemy so they can strike when you are most vulnerable.

She remembered the sirens, the alarms and cries of her fellow men, each one trying to fight off the invaders, the sound of guns and screams of death and urging to take control and fight or flight or defend and she remembered how she watched them be slaughtered, weak and powerless and utterly blind to what space had brought to them.  
In hindsight, it was not space that had delivered them to their enemies. They had delivered themselves, chasing strange signals and stranger glimmers of a life beyond. They had found alien life.  
Yet it was not friendly, and it did not come in peace. So when the lifeforms she knew were not human rounded the corner, when they stormed the room she had been allotted to use for research, they found her, hands in the air, on her knees, waiting for pain, death, or chains. She knew when she had lost. She knew that this had been a risk, it always had been. Yet still, even as they bound her in strange devices that glowed and eerie violet, she did not regret her choices.  
She had arrived to space, in space, and was a part of space. This was her dream wasn’t it?

“Tell me.” He began, in a voice that was so oddly neutral, so refined and mannered she wondered what was the nature of her captors.  
“What were a bunch of earthlings doing so far from their pathetic planet?” She didn’t look up, she had not looked up once. She felt like it would be seen as defiance, a threat, and she very much wanted to live.  
“System X9Y _is_ pretty boring.” The woman, (their voice seemed female, as the first speaker’s voice had sounded male, yet it was strange. She should be afraid. Terrified. Yet all she wondered was how these being, these people existed. What they were, if they had genders and how did they evolve and-)  
“Ezor-“ The male’s voice was harsh, commanding. He was the defacto leader, and it made her flinch, even though his words, (the female’s name?) was not to her.  
“As I was asking our lone survivor here-“ The words were spoken on purpose, drawn out to tell her just what had happened, and where her place was and how little they valued her life. She was a captive, a prisoner, and she was of no consequence.  
“-why they were so far from their miserable excuse of a planet.” There was a silence that followed but once more the commanding voice cut through it like a finely honed blade.  
“I asked you a question, so you best answer it. I prefer not having to resort to more barbaric methods of getting what I want but if I must, I will.” Promises promises, she did not lift her head as she fought back the tremble of her voice.

“We were trying to see if there was anything beyond our system. There was a signal and-“  
“Signal?” That had caught the commander’s attention and he barked out an order, to find what signal it was that they had been chasing. The answer was ironic.  
“Sir, is appears to have been… us. There are no other signals in this entire system that would have been picked up by their basic equipment.”

The laughter that filled the room was cruel in it’s mirth, and the man who laughed to himself knew it.  
“Oh now that is rich. I must say, that’s a fair bit of misfortune now isn’t it?” Vaguely, she was aware that she was breathing through her mouth, that her heart rate was skyrocketing. The dull din of footsteps that neared her from the platform where the commander’s voice had emanated from were drowned away by the sound of blood rushing in her ears, the thunder of fear and utter want to fight and live and-

“I said look at me.” The boots were in her lowered gaze, and as they moved upward she feared what she would find.

“My, had I known our little captive had such lovely blue eyes I might have said something sooner.” He was humanoid, more, he was handsome with angular features, with long white hair and strange markings and even stranger eyes. They were somthing more than human, something almost familiar but also nothing like anything she had seen before.  
“I would have enjoyed seeing them wide with your terror when you first arrived, but I suppose I will settle for the current fear in them for now.” His hand was soft, fingers warm as they cupped her chin and he bent down so that his gaze was level to her own.  
“What is your name?” She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue, her body shaking and knowing he could feel it in his hand, the slight vibration of her body all encompassing.

“Stephanie Graves.” She blinked as she saw his curiosity waver, as he felt she had reached her purposes end. So she said something else. It was instinctive, born of habit and a lifetime of knowing that she was a woman, and men all had once vice when it came to women.  
“Commander.” His eyes widened suddenly, his fingers tightened around her jaw just enough to give the smallest sensation of pressure.

Those strange alien eyes flashed with a spark she knew. Men all shared the same vice at the end of the day. They craved _power_ , and any who reminded them of their power, who would admit to being lesser, were things they could control.  
“And how do you know I am the commander?” He asked, the look changing from a base curiosity to something darker, something malicious that was testing her, seeking some unknown answer that would hold her fate by threads.  
She let out a breath, her eyes reaching is and holding his gaze.  
“Because only a commander would make sure a prisoner knew her place without ever having to have a weapon in his hand... and have the power to do it by word alone.”  
He smiled at her answer and ordered her to be given one of the nicer cells. He would deal with her personally later.

Stephanie hoped she had passed his test.

She didn’t have to wait long to find out the results.

 

She had been sleeping when he arrived and when her vision focused, she wondered how she had failed to hear him enter the cell. How she hadn’t noticed how he sat so confidently at the foot of her cot, staring at her, appraising her like one would a puzzle yet to be solved. For a beat she was frozen, the cloth she’d used as a covering held tight in her fist over her chest like an armor, body tense and muscles coiled to spring.  
“I see that you’ve deemed it fit to finally grace me with your presence. I was wondering if perhaps your species simply roll over and die after suffering such elevated levels of stress.” He stood, getting off the cot, separating them, two strides and he was halfway across the cell, his eyes digging into her like claws. No cloth could shield her from him, and no armor would have made her not feel so vulnerable to the being that stood before her.

“Stress will cause the body to emit higher levels of adrenaline which can lead to internal trauma if not allowed rest and return to regular non elevated levels, yes.” Her response was factual and detached. As soon as she said it however she froze up, realizing that perhaps, replying in such a curt manner to what was condescension was not likely to be well received.

She was wrong as the commander smirked, seeming amused by her reply.  
“I am afraid we might have started off on the wrong foot as the saying goes. That... is a saying I assume even you know of?” She nodded, pulling the cloth higher up her chest as she leaned back and away from him.  
“You were correct in assuming I am the commander of this ship, but I am also much more than a simple commander Miss Graves.” She kept his gaze and his smirk widened when he caught her eyes. It made her lower her vision to his feet.  
“Good girl, do not meet the gaze of your betters till you have earned it.” She remained still, a small nod of her head the only form of communication she dared.  
“I am a Prince. Prince Lotor, current leader of the Galra empire and you dear miss Graves, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I assume given your people’s lack of recognition and your own open ignorance that you know nothing of the Galra empire or my father, Emperor Zarkon?” It was a question but she remained silent. His sigh was exasperated yet he pushed on.  
“You do have my permission to speak you know. Not out of turn of course, but a conversation does require two participants.” 

Head lowered, she shifted on the cot, curling her legs under her, trying to make herself smaller somehow.  
“No. I- we didn’t think there was um,” she swallowed, “sentient life anywhere near the sol system. Perhaps several tens of thousands of light-years away but nothing even remotely close.”  
“I see.” Two steps back, his feet in front of her, she kept her gaze down and once again, he cupped her chin and made her meet his gaze.  
“We came to find information on the nature of the Paladins of Voltron. But I bet you have no idea who Voltron even is do you?”

She remembered only whispers in training halls, rumors and stories. Clips and audio files hidden deep, deep in the system where you were never supposed to go searching for answers.  
“It was mentioned by Shirogane Takashi when they found him outside the academy. Back when-“ Suddenly, the commander, prince, _Lotor_ , was pinning her to the cot, eyes burning and his fury in the air around them like crackling lightning.  
“Tell me what you know.” The sudden nearness left her mouth open in shock, and she felt exposed, powerless and helpless under him.

“I- they were just a few clips and file and-“ He hissed at her, not satisfied with her stammering.  
“ **Tell me.** ”

His voice made her walls crumble, her fear fade into the back of her mind as she surrendered what he demanded of her.  
“The day after there was a crash by the Galaxy Garrison, three cadets went missing. Some of us other students dug into the files. We found audio and video files. The missing pilot of the Kerberos mission had crash landed and talked about aliens, about a Voltron. The next day, some huge mechanical blue lion was spotted in the dessert not far off before it took off into space. That's all I know, I swear. The ship might have a few files but I doubt it has much more to offer.”

He held her to the cot, and a lock of white hair drifted down, brushing against he cheek. It was soft, like his fingers hand been; so unlike his voice, so unlike how his power was.  
“And these cadets, you knew them?” He asked, eyes seeking for something in her gaze once more.  
“Only vaguely. Only what was in the files. I was set to graduate just before they vanished.” He lifted his body off of her own and she realized something then. This man was a threat, perhaps the very threat that Shirogane had spoke of, tried to warn them about. And he thought that whoever these paladins were, the missing cadets of Galaxy Garrison might just be one in the same.

Which led to the conclusion.  
“They’re alive aren’t they? And they’re a threat to you.” She forgot to keep her gaze lowered, and she felt his bloodlust, his need for more knowledge in that glare and smile.  
“Annoyingly so. Yet I fear my forces lack an understanding of your species, and while it would be so easy to subjugate your world-“

“It is better to hold it a threat above their heads to use as a bargaining tool when at the most opportune moment.” She finished for him. It was basic tactics. Child’s play. His smile was almost friendly as he reached out to her with a single hand.

“I am a generous ruler Miss Graves. I might subjugate worlds, but I am no barbarian. I believe that everyone should have some freedom and agency. So allow me to make an offer. While I can torture the information I need from you, I would rather have something else. Your cooperation.” She knew very well what he was asking. Betray those cadets. Betray mankind. Join him willingly and be allowed to live with some control of her fate or die a captive, the knowledge ripped from her and everything left unknown to her.

“I wanted to see what it was like beyond the stars you know.” She said, finding her words, finding her choice had been made the moment she had surrendered on her ship.  
“If I can have that, I will give you anything you ask of me.” His hand was warm as it held her own, his grip gentle and guiding as he pulled her from the cot and made her stand and keep her gaze fixed to his own.

“Then Stephanie, consider the stars and everything beyond them in reach. So long as you serve me and are loyal-“ He pulled her close, too close, and she felt his breath on her face as she realized why his eyes captivated her earlier before.  
They were a vibrant blue cast in a golden yellow.  
“You will find that I am a very generous man of my word.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta, if anyone wants to tho lmk


	2. Obedience is given before it is demanded

They gave her a room. It was perhaps the biggest shock to her, that they would give her a room rather than keep her in the cell. Or not have put her with soldiers, but she also saw the reasoning. She was an interloper. A tool, an asset that was too high a risk to gamble among men and women who saw her as inherently inferior and who outclassed her in nearly every aspect of physiology. It was not cozy or comforting or even a welcoming room. It was tiny and utilitarian, with a small bedside table and lamp, a bed that was only slightly lumpy and smelling of being freshly laundered. There was a even tinier bathroom and Stephanie thanked whatever forces existed that these Galra had the same basic hygiene and bodily functions. So what if the toilet was cramped and the shower only had enough room for her to turn around in? It was better than the alternatives. Nothing, or well, being dead.

After her talk with the prince, (Lotor, she made herself remember), he had told her that she should take her time to bathe and dress, and appropriate attire would be provided. He’d call for her in about two of her ‘earth’ hours to see about getting her caught up on the Voltron situation and seeing to her learning his language among ‘other aspects of our nature’ in reference to the Galra.

That was an hour ago by the watch on her wrist, (which had been spared from their search and strip of her after her immediate capture. Apparently even aliens even knew what a watch was). Given how an hour had passed, and after raiding the (exceptionally) tiny closet she had, there were no clothes, and only one singular body towel in the bathroom, she was quite sure she was either being tested, or, who ever was supposed to delivery her clothes was purposely setting her up to fail and fall quickly out of favor with Lotor. And that would simply not do.

Necessity is the mother of innovation and with only an hour, she set about her task to make herself as presentable and promising of an officer as she could be.

The shower’s hot water was a welcome blessing, helping to ease her tensions and hide how even now, she knew the shock had not completely faded yet. She was still on high alert, her body and mind no longer running on adrenaline but rather on basic survival instincts. Eventually she’d have a breakdown, but she knew that had to wait, it couldn’t happen yet. Not until she knew she was safe. Not when she didn’t have to worry of what would follow in the next few hours.

Hanging her only clothing, (rather, her space suit), up in the tiny bathroom, she let the steam try and freshen up the material as best she could, knowing it would be rather futile but it was something. The shower took her ten minutes, but she let the hot water keep running, trying to get the suit aired out for as long as possible. That meant sitting on her cot, naked save for a towel, waiting and going over every possible scenario. She formed a game plan, a method of tactical advantage that would perhaps show her worth for just a while longer. The prince certainly wanted those former cadets dead, enough that he would try to manipulate her to join him and give her enough comforts to disarm her yet make her aware just how much she would rely on him and his mood for survival. 

She was dancing on a knife’s edge and when Stephanie noticed she had but 15 minutes left, she stopped the shower and steam clean of her suit, sliding it back on with a grimace. It clung to her too closely, and she felt exposed now, knowing that her only comforts were what she’d worn on her body and it would offer her only a chance to be berated for her lack of following an order. Still, she figured it was better to face death clothed than nude.  
Marginally at least.

Lotor was not happy when she saw him next. His eyes went to her than to the guard next to her, disapproval obvious.  
“Didn’t I say to dress appropriately? Wearing that… rag of your world is hardly in good taste or even flattering to your figure. ” Stephanie wasn’t sure who he was asking per say, given that she’d never gotten any other garment, but he _was_ asking. Sadly the escorting solider who’d brought her spoke first.  
“That’s what she chose to wear sir.”  
No it was not, it was all she had, and without prompting, in a rush of defense of her character she spoke out of turn.  
“It is all I had to wear. The options were my suit or nothing at all. And on earth, nudity is frowned upon at formal, professional, gatherings.” Her eyes glared at the solider, at her use of professional. She would speak for herself. She would not allow anyone to take control over her agency. Not when her life hung so precariously in the balance. If she would die, it would be by her own folly, not because of being set up.  
Granted she spoke out of turn, but, she would not be made out to be incompetent.  
Lotor, to his credit, just looked her over and dismissed her escort, leaving him, her, and those she assumed to be his advisors or trusted commanders beside him. Notably they all seemed feminine which made Stephanie wonder if sexism was less prevalent with the Galra, or, if gender was not so simple, (when had it ever been). 

“Weren’t you given armor and a uniform?” His tone was shorter than before. He wasn’t trying to win her over any longer, now, he was expecting obedience, and her lack of following an order was a clear indication that he hardly trusted her beyond knowing she would obey if only for self-preservation.

“I wasn’t given any. The room I was allowed, which is very nice, thank you, lacked any items that would be like that which I have seen your people wear. I apologize if I simply overlooked some unknown compartment but I am telling you only the truths that I know. There was no uniform or armor made available to me.” Eyes downcast, she kept her head bowed as she spoke lifting it only when she’d finished.

Lotor was restraining himself she realized, and she didn’t know why.  
“It seems one of my men disobeyed me then. I gave a direct order and it was not followed. You are not at fault. This time.” Again, an understanding. There could be no ‘next time’. Any infraction would not be taken lightly. He would have her obedience, completely.  
“As for the room, I’m glad you find it suitable. Consider it your new home. I trust you understand why I have allowed you that privilege?” She nodded. She knew very well why she was being kept separated.

“Good, now Miss Graves, let me introduce to you my generals-“ All female, all half galra as well apparently. Stephanie tucked the fact away. There was a reason he let her know this, a reason he pointed it out.  
“Now that that formality has been addressed, we must deal with your position under me.” She swallowed as his smirk bloomed on his face, and she felt something spark in her. A raw primal fear that a woman faced with a man who held control over her agency.  
“You will report directly to me, daily, of your progress with decoding anything we recover from Voltron and seeing to create code that would prove advantageous. Altean is easy enough to learn, as is our written language. But, for the sake of progress, you’ll be subject to neural influence.” She stiffened.  
“You mean… brain reconditioning?”  
His laughter boomed in the control room, eyes holding a true amusement at her query.  
“Close, it’s a harmless procedure, it will simple provide you an understanding of needed languages used. You were a programmer and engineer yes? Think of it as an injection of code. It does not rewrite, but rather builds upon. You will still be you, if that’s what concerns you.”  
She shook her head for a moment before she noticed his smirk shift to a frown.  
“I- that is less my concern your highness, just that as a human, I am uncertain if ah, Galra physiology is analogous enough to mine that there are no unforeseen risks.”  
He scoffed then as if she’d just insulted him personally.  
“Stephanie,” his voice was made to be soothing, assuring, yet if felt dangerous. “My people have done this to countless other races before, you must give me some credit. I would not have your mind put at risk when I intend for it to be of use to me.” 

She nodded, “I see. I am sorry for expressing my doubt, but as is, I am at a disadvantage. Your technology is very... foreign to me.”  
“You are sorry for expressing your doubt but not for having doubt?”  
She winced internally, he’d caught her. Once more, she felt the hot flush of a need to exert herself, to demand to not be dismissed and considered utterly spineless or weak. Bendable, not breakable.  
“Can you blame me? I have never seen anything like you, your ship or anything alien in my life. It is only rational I will doubt.” She looked back to the floor.  
“Your highness.” She used his title, hoping to deflect him from her outburst.

The soft chortle from two of the generals could be heard as the click of boots descending the dais came closer to her. Stephanie waited for what she was sure was a reprimand.  
“Your Prince.” His hand at her chin to guide her gaze to his. Thrice now, he had touched her in such a way. Thrice, to make her face him and press his will into her own, to make her yield to him.  
“You are not an ‘earthing’ anymore, you are my personal programmer and engineer and a part of the Galra empire. I am your prince, your lord, and most of all your master.” There was an edge in there, a distinction.  
“Your lack of Galra blood matters little to me, but among my men, I and I alone can protect you. Remember that in the coming days Stephanie. I own you, and you will obey me as is your station.”  
She blinked, her mouth dry as she swallowed and was forced to stare into his eyes and feel their intensity.

“Understood.” He gave a small pressure to her chin with the press of her fingers.  
“Master.” Her voice caught on the title, fear and wonder if that was what he wanted. His smile was cold and unkind and the pressure left her face as a thumb stroked over her lower lip.  
“Very good. You catch on quick. For tonight, rest. In the morning, you will have appropriate clothing and armor. I expect you dressed and ready for your education.” A tremor ran up her spine and she didn’t miss the slight dilation of his pupils. Her fear was amplified when it clicked as to just what was happening.

“After that sir?” Her voice was weak and she’d lost her nerve, his eyes betraying know an emotion that left her feeling hopeless and raw.  
“Then you will come to me for further instruction.” He let go of her chin but not before keeping her head tilted up so she would watch him walk back to the dais, to his chair.  
“You are dismissed. The guard at the door will show you to your room. If you have need of anything,” He was smiling, radiating confidence, “ask and I will see you are provided for. I have no intention of letting you or your no doubt many talents going unused due to neglect. As I told you, I can be very generous.”

When Stephanie reached her room, (her gilded prison), she felt her body break down, her resolve shatter and crumble as her fear finally overtook her and tears ran down her face while reality sunk in.  
On the floor, tears and snot running down her face, she curled in on herself as she realized just what she had missed, what she’d nearly dismissed the entire time.  
She was captive to an alien prince who exerted his dominance and demanded utter obedience. One who had all but made it clear; He fully planned to use her however he saw fit. He owned her, and he would dominate her and she would accept his control without complaint.

And a tiny part of her did not mind giving herself so long as she could still remain among the stars.


	3. Lessons are learned before they are taught

When she woke up, she wanted to pretend she was back on her ship. In her bunk. Or back home in her tiny little apartment on the base. With her small terracotta animals that lined her windowsill. The sun warm and hazily coming up over the red cliffs and casting an orange and gold light across the desert. She wanted to be able to open the window and smell the warmth of earth. To feel the cool tile under her feet in her kitchen. To step onto the porch and drink her earl grey tea with a dash of milk and a spoonful of wildflower honey.

She wanted to pretend she was on earth.

But she knew she wasn’t. The smell of starchy sheets, chemical clean sterility, the coarse cloth that were her blankets, the cool ambient air and the hum of engines told her this was not earth. And when she gave in and looked out the window, there was no sunrise to greet her. Only a thousand glittering stars twinkling innocent and far away.

Stephanie could not find it in her to cry. Not anymore. Her tears had all dried up after her break down last night. After her revelation and realization. The stars were still there, shining. She was still alive. She was captive, facing an uncertain future, but she was alive another day.  
Her captor had used the oldest most primordial fear to gain her utter compliance but he had also taken care to ensure she would not be brought to needless harm or exposed to more danger than necessary. He was ensuring she would be made loyal beyond her lip service and she knew if all his veiled threats, he had given her one constant.  
Lotor was not a man to be underestimated and not a man to be crossed.

Fully awake now, Stephanie went to bathe, slightly taken aback by the dark body suit and armor that sat on the stool. Once again, someone had come in while she’d slept. Perhaps her first request of Lotor to see how well he’d hold to his offer would be about getting her a lock on her door, (or at least a doorbell so she could be awake for any ‘guest’).  
Bathed, dressed, (the suit clung to her, tightly in places that left no room for decency, and she internally cringed at how her underthings showed faintly on the seams), the once intrepid explorer was now looking like an out of place alien solider. The armor was surprisingly light yet she didn’t doubt it’s durability. A glance in the mirror, she wished for a bit of makeup too. At least some to cover the bags under her eyes and maybe something to diminish their puffy state. Overall, she gave herself a seven out of ten, given the current situation. 

Her watch said it was 7 am by earth time. Another request for Lotor then. If she could have a clock and perhaps a basic itinerary. Though, if the prince-commander was so adamant of her personally reporting to him, she assumed he’d provide her with that information by the day’s end. He seemed the sort to like to micromanage those he felt would benefit him the most.   
At 7:26 am, Stephanie had her first ‘guest’. A new escort guard, telling her to go with him. It was time for her ‘education’. He was larger than Lotor, wider. His ears looked almost feline, his nose hooked and jaw square. Yellow eyes that lacked a pupil or iris, she wondered how they saw the world around them. In color like her? InfraRed? Ultraviolet? His left leg was a robotic prosthetic, and she stared at it while her eyes were down, wondering how advanced the Galra really were. Space travel was one thing, but a limb of metal and flesh that looks perfectly form fitting to it’s user was a downright medical marvel. Not to mention what Lotor had said about her lesson being a direct lobal interface that would more or less input ‘data’ to her brain.

The sudden fact that aliens were literally going to probe her brain drew a tiny laugh from her, which only made her guard scoff and grunt at her.  
“You think this is funny _human_?” His voice was deep and reminded her of a smoker, his tone clearly indicative what he thought of her and her race. The scar on his neck spoke of nerve damage however, and she knew better than to fall for his distaste of her being. Perhaps while the Galra had advance medical research, some things were non-necessity and thus given less attention? Or did some scars reflect a more seasoned fighter and worn as marks of courage? Questions hovered in the front of her mind before her escort shoved her shoulder outside a set of tall double doors.  
“I asked what’s so amusing human? You think your presence here is some kind of joke?”  
He was talking to her, and she snapped from her thoughts, suddenly standing upright, heels clicking out of training.  
“No sir, I was just recalling a rather ironic trope that is rather amusing is all.”  
“Oh, and why is it so funny?”  
“Yes, Stephanie, what _is_ so amusing?” His voice was that blade, grazing over bare skin, cool and deadly and if she moved it would cut her and she would bleed.  
“Prince Lotor.” Stephanie’s guard closed his fist and held it over his chest. A salute. One she quickly mimicked.

He was leaning against one of the doors, now open, and she felt ice rush down her veins. He had every look of a predator. Eyes focused and clear. Posture relaxed yet also in a manner that suggested a readiness to strike. A panther, she would have likened him too, but a panther would not kill or attack unless provoked. With Lotor? Stephanie was still puzzling him out.

“Uh-“ She looked down at the floor before his tsk made her look back at him.  
“Eyes up. Tell me directly what amuses you so much.” His smile was almost charming, almost handsome. Had she not known it, she would have thought him simply a man trying to perhaps flirt with her. But he was more than a male- he was a commander, her commander, calculated and controlling. Dominating.  
She swallowed and licked her lips as she replied, (his eyes flickered over her lips. Different she noticed once more. His pupils allowed a certain expressiveness to him, allowed him to point just exactly what held his focus, unlike the other Galra,).  
“In human media, it’s a rather historical trope to have aliens abduct a human only to um. Probe them. Try to gather information through an invasive process before dropping the human back where they’ve been abducted with only small visions of the process.” She blushed, feeling both the Galra men’s stare at her small form.   
“I suppose I can see why then you might find the situation ironic then. You’re dismissed solider, go back to your post. I will call for you later.” Lotor’s dismissal of her escort shouldn’t have made Stephanie more nervous but it did. She couldn’t help but have her head turn and watch as he walked away, leaving the woman in the presence of the volatile Prince.

“Is this probing in your media something to be embarrassed over?” He asked, making her realize she’d looked away from him, and now he stood in front of her chest to chest, he held a good foot over her and he was close enough she could feel his sheer presence like a blanket smothering her.   
“I-“ His hand did it again. Slipping under her chin so her eyes would be caught by his own, unable to escape.  
“Yes.” She breathed softly through her mouth, the affirmation coming out quieter, a whisper as if it was something to be ashamed of. If it was something intimate.  
“How so?” It was an innocent question, and she felt heat in her face at the genuine curiosity there in his gaze.  
“There are two ways probing is portrayed in media.” He began to smile; he knew she was uncomfortable and was taking pleasure in it.  
“Describe them.”  
“One is to open the skull and invade one’s brain. The other is-“ She saw it back, that dark look. That threat of how he could harm her if he wanted to and how no one would stop him, least of all her.  
“-The other is ah-“ His fingers stroked the sides of her face before slipping lower, ghosting down the side of her neck.  
“Anally.” His breath was sharp and she felt his fingers end their caress at the top of her new Galra uniform, (it was too close, too intimate, he was making her know the promise of pain, the promise of his gentle touch and lack of harm if she obeyed and complied of her own will).   
“And you humans consider this to be something shameful?” He was teasing her now, (was it teasing? He sounded amused. But also wanting to push her, embarrass her, disarm her and make her defenses fall).  
Stephanie wanted to breath, to have space but she remained frozen. Heels together, arms at her sides. A good soilder. An obedient solider. 

“Most humans do. It is also considered highly-“  
“Sexual.” He finished for her, eyes closing slowly, (just like a cat, reaching a state of contentment).

“Pity your kind find such a thing shameful. Pleasure is pleasure, no matter it’s source. But as enlightening as this conversation has been, your education-” (he pushed the door open after stepping away, and Stephanie felt it easier to breathe again), “-Will be neither pleasurable or painful. It will be several hours and you will not remember it. But, when it is over you will know about us. About the Galra, our empire, languages, technology, history.” He motioned for her to follow him and she did. She was a step behind him as he led her down the hall.  
“You will also know our biology.” His look over his shoulder at her was cruel. Teasing. Sexual. He was playing her fears and he knew it too.

As Lotor explained the process of her ‘education’ he also explained her position. As a non-Galra she was the alien in this case. In his society, she’d normally be equal to a slave, and in many ways, she would be. But- she was intelligent and held information otherwise unobtainable from elsewhere. He had made her his slave for both her protection, and so she could be of service in his forces without needless question. In rank, she was both solider, slave, and programmer and engineer. To other Galra, she wasn’t to be harmed or expected to serve them on a personal level, but she would not question them unless they sought to undermine him. If they sought to undermine Lotor, then she was free to exert authority as needed. He would trust her judgment and need for survival to be judicial in her use of that privilege.   
She lived to serve him, and by serving him, she was serving the empire. This was her place in the current Galra society, (she noticed the use of ‘current’ in his wording. He was not content with the status quo. Another mystery to add to her ‘Master’. Commander. Prince.). 

“There will be times where your position under me will be brought to question given my unconventional methods. In such times, you will trust my judgement and you will defer to me every single time.” She nodded.  
“Understand Stephanie, I am making an investment into you. You will always be an exception but not exceptional. Service me well, and you will have certain freedoms. Meet my demands, you will be allowed a decent autonomy. Fail me, disappoint me, make me question why I bother?” They stopped in front of a small door, a low buzz emitting on the other side.  
“I don’t plan on giving you a reason too.” He stared at her, and she realized why. He was expecting her to affirm the previous day’s lesson on her position.  
“Master.” His smile was sinister and his hand slipped behind her, palm against her lower back as he opened the door with his free hand.  
“Good girl.” She was slowly convinced that the Galra must be feline in nature, the way his voice came out a damn near purr.

“I’ll have your guard retrieve you once you’re finished with the first session. After that, you’ll have a chance to rest, eat, then you’ll be joining me for a… quiz of sorts.” She stiffened as she saw the bed, clinical, the instruments looked right out of every science fiction horror movie she’d ever watched as a child.   
“Don’t worry, there won’t be any probing.” He teased, and that’s when she felt it, the hand slipping up the base of her spine before he pulled his fingers away, his mouth hovering in her hair, by her ear and in clear view of the masked Galra who stared at them both, passive and waiting for Lotor to allow them to begin.  
“ _For now._ ” She felt that fear race down her spine, along with something else. His voice was that promise. Pain for disobedience. Reward for compliance? 

Her head twisted and her blue eyes found his. Dark, twisted, cruel, yet amused. She was a game to him. A toy.

A pet.

“Until tonight.” She looked away and his hand snapped to grab her chin again. Fifth time now.  
Her pulse raced as he stared her down, daring her to not address him.  
“My Prince.” Her words were small, soft and afraid, (she hated it. Hated how he was making her tremble, making her fear what he could do). His fingers did not let go, and so she dared to try harder, to beg for a small mercy and be forgiven for not pleasing him, (it was wrong she knew, this was how you broke down, this was how your captor began to Stockholm syndrome you).   
“ _Master_.”

His hand slipped up running his fingers through a few strands of her hair as if he was petting her, soothing her. It was meant to be intimate, perhaps comforting, assuring, but it felt vile to her, it felt wrong.  
 _“Good girl.”_  
So why, as he left her to the masked Galra, (druids, she’d learn, they were druids), why did hearing his praise, did she feel such a sense of relief? She didn’t have a chance to think on it for very long, the syringe in her arm a prick, and a wash of sleepiness stealing away her thoughts of him.

And the strange enigmatic smile he gave her as he vanished beyond the door.


	4. A Weapon is forged before it is needed

As it turned out, having one’s brain picked around in by alien tech was not all that painful so much as it was unsettling. Stephanie had woken with her mouth feeling like cotton balls, her head feeling clear, (not blank just without the frantic bouncing of thoughts, a focus, a preciseness she’d not had since before her capture), and her limbs feeling like jelly. The druids helped her down and guided her to the hall, letting her have a few moments to regain her balance before leaving her there, alone.

Slowly, she tried to decipher just what had changed, if anything.  
Then, looking back on the druids, she knew exactly what had been done. She knew they were druids. They worked with quintessence. They had used Galra technology and their powers to manipulate her very life force and-  
Her stomach lurched just as her escort guard arrived.  
“Balrung.” That was his name, also helpfully provided by her time under the druid’s careful filling of her mind.  
The guard scowled, but didn’t seem overly shocked at her calling his name. Rather he just seemed annoyed at her existence in general. Of course, she would too, if she was once an infantry solider now relegated to glorified baby sitter for a captive the prince wanted to entertain himself with.

That thought came with her new knowledge, and Stephanie’s breath hitched as she fell behind Balrung’s step.  
“Sir.” She broke their silence, wanting to know. She had to know, begin to understand just what the purpose of Prince Lotor’s chosen methods of dealing with her were. Had he wanted her service, he could have made her a slave and be done with it. But he’d gone further. He was making it personal and by most standards, for a Galra to act like he was towards her was like that of a child testing a new toy at best, perverse and depraved at best. All provided his end goal. Which thus far hinted at two things. A human who would be used to unnerve the paladins and offer Lotor a natural human mind to be set against his enemies. Or.  
Or.

“What is it Graves?” He growled her name, and she smirked internally, noting how his ears slightly twitched. Very cat-like.  
“Do you know why Prince Lotor has taken a special interest in me?” To the point, scheming was not something many soldiers appreciated. They tended to prefer upfront confrontation rather than tactics. Just why their commanders were tricky. They were exceptional amongst their kind.  
Balrung paused, his brow creasing in genuine thought yet he did not stop walking.  
“Ask him yourself. If he has plans for you, you best just obey them if you want to live.” Fair enough, Balrung didn’t know anything past his orders, and even if he did, he figured it would risk his own neck to tell her. Stephanie sighed, but, it was one expected outcome. Soon enough, after a bit of walking, she was deposited back in her rooms. Balrung told her that she would have two hours rest and if she wanted to eat, to go out and down the hall. He was stationed there and had orders to take her to the cafeteria would she want food before her daily reporting to the prince.

Stephanie hit the bed, closed her eyes, and the next time she opened them, Balrung was shoving at her shoulder and telling her to get up or be late for her meeting. And Balrung was not ‘above dragging you to the Prince’s rooms by a broken limb.’ It was like being at the Garrison again, scrambling to freshen up before meeting a senior officer.  
Balrung just looked at her with a mild curiosity as she combed her hair and gargled water to clear her dry mouth. She looked as good as she had that morning. Not bad but… she could have done better with the right materials. Granted, why she wanted to put effort into her appearance for a man that saw her entire race as inferior was beyond her but, she’d done the same at the Garrison. Men liked a pretty face more than a natural one.

Eight minutes later, she was at the door of what Balrung introduced as Lotor’s room. Not an audience chamber. Not a study. Not some meeting hall. His room. The sudden nausea was back along with that subconscious paranoia she’d felt when she’d last seen him.  
“Your highness, I have brought Graves.” Balrung spoke at the door. No doorbells existed on this ship apparently. Scratch one request for the prince then. The door opened and if she was being fair, Lotor’s rooms did not seem overtly opulent all things given. They were far larger than her own and had room for a full desk, a couch and coffee table, a large bookcase and-  
Well, as a prince she figured he was allowed the cliché overly large bed. She was almost disappointed however that it was not made of gold or something garish. He did look to have silk sheets though. Violet. A tiny part of her found the cliché slightly amusing. Perhaps some things were indeed universal.

“You know, most women who eye my bed that long typically wear far less.” His words were too near and Stephanie jumped when she realized that the prince was standing just beside her, close enough that if he wished, he could touch her.  
“I-“ She remembered what she had learned, not taking a step back, Standing upright, bow slightly at her waist, her fist closed and place over her chest.  
“Master.” He was her prince now, but as she was considered his property, she was expected to defer to his preferred title of his station above her rather than his given. She kept her eyes to the floor, remained bowed and waiting. From what she’d learned, this was the proper manner of greeting so why did he not move? Why remain silent?

“Good girl.” His voice was airy, but spoken more with a hint of… fondness? It lacked a certain charge to it as it had before, and he ran fingers in loose strand of her hair. The action, his tone, his words- all of it made her shudder through a range of emotions. Most of them linked to being uncomfortable of mildly afraid. Others to something she didn’t want to think about.  
“At ease _pet_.” The term seemed almost… bitter now in his tone? Like he didn’t want to use it. She wondered if he disliked using the term. But the alternative was slave and well… Calling her a slave would hardly endear her to him. Pet was better, but not by much. A reminder of her place, but one that did not entirely make it seem that he was not fond of her by default.  
“I take it your lessons went well. The druids told me you were highly receptive and also rather-“ He hummed, his one hand still playing in her hair, stroking it and twirling it in his fingers.  
“-eager to take what were providing.” He made it sound perverse, and she knew he was doing it to get a reaction from her. He’d seen a fear in her at his attentions, and so he was using it. It was just tactics she rationalized. She just had to show that it wouldn’t work anymore.

Arm lowered, she lifted her head and kept her eyes from him for a moment before that ghostly brush of fingers touched her chin. He wanted her eyes, per the usual it would seem. Blue to blue, he seemed more curious this time, genuinely wondering as to what she knew and what he could discover from her.  
“You haven’t eaten yet.” He stepped from her, hair falling back to her face as he walked to the center of the room, motioning her to sit on the couch. A bowl of fruit that she recognized only from her lesson sat and she waited for permission.  
Lotor’s smile was one of pleasure. Obedience would be rewarded.  
He chose the fruit, a small prickly green one that came from a rather tropical planet lacking any advanced species, but perfect for cultivation of food. The Galra had claimed it, and this native fruit was considered something of a treat for them. It was also safe for her to eat as well. Lotor waited for her, eyes silently telling her that yes, he expected her to eat.

It tasted like fresh honeydew, a perfect softness but with that firm flesh that didn’t make it melt in your mouth entirely and just shy of being too juicy.  
Her first real food in over a day, and Stephanie couldn’t help the moan that left her as she began to ravenously devour the alien offering. Lotor’s peel of laughter was ignored as she consumed it, skin and all.  
“I take it you found it pleasing?” He was leaning on the chair’s arm, legs open. Relaxed, she realized, he was relaxing. Another realization: He was taking care of her, making sure she was eating and had the energy she needed before they would begin. He was lowering his defenses slightly for _her_ ease. He said he would ensure her wellbeing, but to see him personally holding up on it was odd to say the least.  
“It’s like-“ She ran a thumb over her chin catching a strand of the juice and licking it off her finger, not caring how it must have looked. She was starving, her body now screaming at her for not having eaten.  
“It’s sweet like honeydew. A melon from earth. But the flesh is softer, and there is no rind. I-“ Stephanie realized that if she wanted to meet him halfway, she’d have to begin to play into his games.  
“I found it exceptionally pleasing master.” She tried to not make it sound so charged, but the uptick in Lotor’s mouth told her they both knew it was just a layer of this twisted game he’d begun. She was his pet, he was her owner. A slave and a master. But also not. She was his newest weapon, a working ace in development. One he would use when the moment was right. He wanted to push at her, see how far she would bend before she broke. If she played with him, rather than against him, they would both be able to read each other better. Him, to manipulate her better; her, to learn to defend against him and remain more independent of him.  
“Good. Now-“ He handed a new fruit to her. These ones small and hard on a single thin vine. Pink, it was perfectly round and about the size of cherry tomatoes. 

They tasted like the mangos she’d had with a touch of chili powder. A snack she’d eat back in her cadet days when they’d sneak off into town, (she missed earth, yet, she couldn’t help her focus to be her fascination with the fruit. The flavor, the texture, the way they crumpled like rice candy on her tongue).

It went on like that for a while. He would choose a fruit, hand it to her, have her eat it, and ask her how she liked it.  
The bowl was nearly empty when he grabbed a small misshapen fruit. It was perhaps most closely resembling a carrot in color and length, but it had small branches, like a buddha’s hand citron. What was most odd was that Lotor didn’t hand it over to her but rather stood and moved next to her.  
“Do you know this one?” She stared at it and-  
“No.” She said, blinking in mild frustration. The others she’d known, in detail, about their origins and danger posed for her eating them if any, (the miniature purple apple was one that if eaten in excess could induce hallucinations. Just why with that one Lotor had only allowed her a small bite).

The prince smirked and bit into the fruit. What was strange was that the skin was thick, and his sharp incisors were used and needed to tear open one end of it. Stephanie began to doubt this particular fruit would be one she’d eat at all, given how he’d had a small difficulty getting to the inner flesh. Or rather-  
“Is it rotten?” She couldn’t help it. The incredulity in her tone was met with a laughter before he reached over with his free hand cupping her chin as she figured was just a force of habit now for him. Inside the fruit was a sort of puree. A mash? Slime? It was not liquid but certainly if it had once been a solid it wasn’t anymore.  
It did smell cloyingly sweet though.

“No, it’s ripe and perfectly fine. It’s also something I told the druid to purposely not teach you of.” Stephanie tensed. A test then?  
“I want you to drink it and tell me what you taste.” It was a simple enough order. But-  
“Is it-“ She closed her mouth. To question his choice of what to feed her was stupid. He had no reason to harm her. He wanted to test her trust of him.  
“How do I eat it?” She amended her question and he smiled.  
“Open your mouth pet.” The term again, but this time lacking emotion. It was an order, simple as that. She did as she was told, closing her eyes, expecting that he would feed her directly. Bold assumption.  
But a correct one.

The strange mash slid into her mouth and she felt cold. It was like a slushie and the flavor was a mix somewhere between orange and chocolate. Yet the chill it brought on made her shiver. She swallowed and the chill spread from her core. It was having a strange cooling effect on her and-  
“Prince Lo-“ Her mouth felt weak as she spoke, eyes drooping as she leaned forward, collapsing into his lap in an entirely undignified manner.

Fear spiked but her body refused to let her move. Drugged? Perhaps this was a sedative type of plant? So why then had he fed it to her?  
His laughter filled the room and he set the empty shell of the fruit down, and even in her semi-drowsy state, she could feel his hand stroking her hair, running fingers down her scalp and through the strands.

“It is a fruit that is considered extinct. From Altea, I discovered it by accident from a rather fortuitous source. A botanist on a world we invaded had preserved it. For all intents and purposes, no one will know this fruit. The plant remains where it was, it’s caretaker alive and well, but the fruit is unable to propagate. It cannot be cultivated, but he sends me what it produces. A gesture of goodwill or tribute; all the same only I have the luxury of it’s flavor.” He sounded sad. Almost as if he wished there was more.  
Stephanie hummed, unable to speak in her sedative state.  
“You have held up remarkably well Stephanie. Many would have rebelled, fought back, or simply surrendered with no desire to risk their lives. But you have done well. I’m almost impressed.”  
His hand rested on top of her head, a finger tapping her skull.  
“Almost.” A touch of playfulness there.

He moved her body to it’s side, holding and lifting her gently to am more comfortable position. She couldn’t thank him, but she tried. A small pleased hum made to try and express gratitude for not being such as heap of collapsed limbs sprawling on his couch.  
And him.

“I will be frank with you. You make me curious. The paladins are human and thus far their unpredictability makes them both weak yet formidable. Humans are a race we Galra find inferior yet it was a group of humans that Voltron chose. Humans that managed to take down my father. If I am to defeat them, I must understand them. What better way to understand them than to have a human of my own? One trained and taught like them.” She made a curious hum. Or at least she hoped it came off as curious.  
“I did not know of your history, or those of your crew, and originally I thought we’d just take what we needed from whoever survived…But then when I asked how you knew I was the commander your answer… made me reconsider my plan.” His fingers stroking her hair again, she felt him shift under her. It was so.. intimate, yet his touch was soft, comforting even. Stephanie closed her eyes, allowing herself to just relax.

“We searched your ship. Looked at what we found out about you. Then when we spoke you confirmed it. The same training. The same place of origins. Luck and fortune. You were someone who would have an insight to what they would also have. So I made a decision. We would keep you, train you. I would make you my paladin. You won’t have a ship, a weapon, _you_ will be my weapon.”  
Stephanie knew this. He knew she must have figured this out so why.

“But I also realized what else I wanted.” His soothing touch moved down the back of her neck.  
“I wanted to give you those stars you asked for.” Stephanie felt like the rug had been pulled out from under her. Of all things he could have said, why remind her of that moment of weakness and vulnerability?

“It was such a... simple desire you had. Not freedom, not power, you didn’t even want to protect your world or plea for your life and safety. You wanted to explore space. It was in your profile that we obtained. Your title was not just programmer or engineer. It was explorer. And when you said that was what you wanted in exchange for your cooperation… I wanted to give that to you. Strange isn’t it?” His hand made lazy circles on her hip.  
“You took me by surprise. I have conquered worlds, galaxies in the name of the empire, and not one captive I have taken has asked me to keep them from their world, to allow them to explore and travel. To remain with me so long as they could _learn_.”  
She pushed into his lap gently, a rush of embarrassment in the truth of his words. Damn him. Damn him for knowing and reading and discovering her stupid childish dream.

“You will become my paladin Stephanie.”  
He moved her lifting her up and laying her down on the couch. “And I will teach you everything you wish to know. A weapon of knowledge, you will defeat Voltron and it’s paladins in my name. You will become their demise and in time, you will stand by my side. Ready to strike them when the time is right.” He stood, leaving her prone as he picked up the husk of the chill inducing sedative fruit. Tearing off a piece, he chewed it for a moment before returning to her side.

Fingers cupping her chin, she couldn’t fight him off only watch it happen.  
His lips were cool and he pried her mouth open with his tongue, the semi chewed flesh of the fruit slipping into her mouth as he massaged her throat, coaxing her to swallow. Slowly at first, she felt the chill leaving her, her senses begin to return, the sedative state begin to lessen.

Yet his lips didn’t leave.

She couldn’t help it. She found herself liking his touch. Scientifically, she knew humans were social animals, they craved touch and it’s comfort. It had been months since she’d had any form of intimacy. Her crew had been friends, but they high fived at best. This was nice. Being in is lap, having his hands in her hair, his small circles in her hip. It was touch starvation. And she felt like he was offering her something without knowing it.

So she took his unwitting offering, moaning into his mouth and slipping her tongue out to meet his own. Closed her eyes and let go. Forgot that this was a man who could kill her, had killed her friends. Threatened her. Her world. Was telling her she would have to kill one day. That he wanted to make her a weapon. She let it all go and just gave into the moment. Embraced the touch she’d been so starved for.

Lotor responded in kind. A gentle touch that opened her mouth to him more, letting go of her chin as she felt him move over her body, a dip on the cushions indicative that he was all but on top of her now. His one hand going back to her hair, guiding her head back slowly as their kiss gained intensity.

A final pass of his tongue, chasing away the chocolaty orange sweetness, he pulled away, a small noise, a mewl leaving her at the loss of contact. Her eyes opened to find his. Half lidded, not desire but something she couldn’t name.  
“You are mine Stephanie.” The finality in his tone, the command, the implication.

She reached up and stroked the side of his face. A wave of sleepiness falling over her now.  
“Yours.” She replied, hand falling back to her side, a smile tugging at Lotor’s lips.

“Your Paladin. Your weapon.” Affirmations, she watched his smile grow, felt herself accepting her place, the knowledge of what her fate was going to be, why he’d had her learn about the Galra, about their empire. About the history and more, why he had done all he had for her, commit on her.  
“My Master.” A flash of surprise crossed his face. It stole his smirk. It made him seem almost vulnerable as she felt.  
“Lotor.” Her voice failed her and her eyes were too weak to stay open. Yet she could hear him for a while still, feel his breath on her face as she faded into sleep.

“Yes my pet.” He sounded so kind, so gentle.  
“I am yours.”

Stephanie would think on it later.


	5. Allies are made before they are needed

Waking up was an ordeal. As with the day before, she didn’t want to get up, Stephanie wanted to stay asleep, pretend she was on earth. But this morning she knew better than to linger on the too soft couch, (she had been left there, to sleep. Why?). Eyes opening slowly, she didn’t hear anyone, but as she lifted her head, found a note on the table in front of her. She also could taste the chocolate orange fruit from the night before lingering in her mouth, (his mouth and it’s soft press, the feel of his tongue tangling with her own and his hand on her skin and his words).

_Stephanie,  
Your escort will be waiting outside the door. Bathe and dress in your room before reporting to Zethrid for your physical assessment. If she seems a bit rough, be grateful. I told her to go gentle on you, as you are not Galra.   
~ L_

Stephanie gathered this meant that Zethrid, (one of his generals, the one who was prone to violence and incredibly strong), was going to see to her physical training and assign her either a mentor, or a regiment to set her up to basic par with the normal Galra solider. It was expected but, as Sethanie walked out of Lotor’s room she realized she’d not eaten. The thought of food brought back memories of the night prior, of his strange display of almost affection and his gentleness and how he’d allowed her to sleep in his room. He wanted to protect her, but wouldn’t the favoritism be going too far?

Balrung greeted her by the way of grunting out her last name, the look incredulous. He clearly had thoughts on her being in Lotor’s private rooms overnight. And while she might only have the selective education of Galra society, Stephanie wasn’t about to become the source of a rumor. Or be given a look like she was on a walk of shame for something that did not occur.  
“You have something to say of the situation Balrung, I implore you to say it. You may loathe me and my position, but we both serve the empire and I’d rather know just what those who I will be serving think of me before I surpass them.” She knew how to make herself to be a bitch. Women did not get far in the Garrison by being or playing nice with their male counterparts.  
“You could never surpass us human.” He growled at her, ire in his voice palatable.  
“Yet I already have. I will be trusted to destroy Voltron from the inside out. I will uncover it’s secrets where others have failed simply because I am human. I was chosen for this mission by Prince Lotor, while every other Galra solider has been passed over. So, tell me what you want to say Balrung. I’d rather not have a daily pissing contest with you.” She hissed at the back of his head. The sudden stop of the Galra’s stride almost sent her into his back, but when he turned, she could sense the hate in the pupil-less yellow eyes.

“The Prince may have chosen you for a task and be enjoying you for carnal pleasures, but once you prove to be useless, you’ll just be a cast off. As far as I see it, you’ll fail, and he’s wasting his time. He’d be better off fucking you and getting rid of you once he’s had his fill then maintain this drawn out doomed plan.” He was seething and sneering, and Stephanie sneered right back at him.  
“That would be a fair assessment if he did indulge in my body, but you’re mistaken. He has no designs on me in that manner. It would compromise the integrity of my mission. Not to mention, questioning your leader to such depths is treason Balrung.” She glared him down as he flinched at the word treason, the accusation.  
“I won’t sell you out Balrung. But make no mistake, I never _fucked_ my way to power, to my rank. I trained for it, educated myself to surpass my peers. I earned my place among those weak humans. The same race of the paladins of Voltron. My skills, my talents, will be what takes down the lions. _I came to space to be the first one of my people to explore the stars beyond our system. And I plan to master them, and know them better than all others._ ” She moved past him, recognizing where she was, seething and angry and knowing she had to fight this fight many more times if she wanted to ever be taken seriously.  
“Don’t ever question Prince Lotor’s plan again Balrung. Next time, I won’t be so kind as to keep my mouth shut.”

She was a slave but Lotor's slave. She was lesser than a solider but greater. Exert her power but only when needed. Only necessary.   
Balrung had openly questioned Lotor, and if this was a test or not, she would not risk it.  
“Don’t make an enemy of me.” She hissed at him a final time before storming back to her room, a small smirk on her face as the door shut behind her, wheels turning as to how to gain the guard’s loyalty, and thus begin to establish her own place among the ship’s crew.

When she opened the door half an hour later, washed and dressed in clean uniform and armor, he looked at her in silence before nodding.   
He understood her place.   
Balrung was not loyal, not yet, but they were no longer to be openly hostile, least they both desire reprimand.

It was a start.


	6. Power is gained before it is lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Semi-graphic depictions of violence.

Zethrid’s assessment had been generous in Stephanie’s opinion. The woman certainly had not gone easy on her, but, she was fair in her understanding of Stephanie’s limitations. She was far weaker than most Galra infantry, but with the right training, she could easily equal them. It would just take practice. A lot of it. But the ex-explorer knew she’d likely start some form of physical training. A weapon of the mind was only as good as a weapon of the body.

Bruised, sore, she slept in her own bed that night, Lotor’s daily report a simple explanation of the tests Zethrid had put her through and the general’s recommendation. The Prince’s reply had been simply to tell her to rest and eat. He’d have her itinerary for her in the morning. And true to his word, when she woke in her cot, a small tablet with her schedule was on the bedside desk with another note.

_Stephanie,  
This will be your regimen for the next three weeks. I expect you to surpass my expectations my future paladin._

_Do not disappoint me.  
~L_

That was how she began her new life on the Galra warship.  
Wake, be escorted to the cafeteria by Balrung, (each day, she questioned him on the disposition of the soldiers, of their take on her presence. Every day was much the same. They loathed her, a few wanted to kill her, and fewer thought Lotor was correct in using her as he did. Most thought she was a glorified whore however, a distraction at best. Stephanie planned to rectify that as soon as she was able), after breakfast, work on coding various translation indexes for human-English and binary. Creating small scale skeleton keys for later use in firewalls should a coder from Voltron seek to gain access to Galra files. Midday she would go get lunch, (typically a form of high carb meals and high protein drinks), followed by a two hour long session of physical training. Half an hour warm ups, half an hour muscle building. Hour long practical fighting and training. Sessions broken into segments with rest time. Zethrid for all her bloodlust, was smart when it came to physical wellness of all things. Or at least making good well trained soldiers.

End of the day, sore, sweaty, and mentally spent, Stephanie was escorted to the command room, forced to stand in front of Lotor and account for that day’s progress.  
She did not tell him of Balrung’s questioning of his plans or orders.

She told him 3 weeks later however.  
“Permission to speak Master?” Her gaze on the floor, she always waited until he gave her leave to look at him, to speak out of turn. She also called him master, devoid of emotion, of that fear. Ever since the night with the fruit, he had ben distant, keeping her within arm’s reach but no closer. She didn’t have to guess as to why. He favored her, had ensured that her reputation would be brought to question. None would dare confront him, but anyone could confront her. So far, none had, but that did not mean she didn’t hear their murmurs and whispers in the cafeteria, in the halls.

“You may speak pet.” He hardly helped it with calling her his pet every single damn day however.  
“The night after my first daily report I confronted my escort Balrung about his open hostility towards me. I made a rather unsavory discovery that required me to further investigate to determine the best course of action.” Lotor leaned forward in his seat and nearby, Ezor giggled. She always enjoyed the gossip that Stephanie would sprinkle in on occasion. Just enough to allow Lotor to be aware that she was listening, that she was taking measure of her situation and how it might affect his plans.  
“And this discovery?” He feigned disinterest and acted as if he knew what she was about to say. Likely he already did. Stephanie still pressed on.  
“It is a common enough belief that I am your pleasure slave, and less your future weapon against Voltron. Many of your soldiers think that I am a distraction and that your plan to utilize me against Voltron a doomed one.” She paused, waiting to hear his assessment of her sudden rather outspoken deliverance of the news.

“And why should I care what they think of you? It’s your own fault that you have not proven yourself useful thus far. Those that question me have a fair reason to given your lack of proving.” His words cut, but she maintained composure, barely.  
“It undermines my effectiveness if your men lack a basic respect for me, so I ask you allow me to prove myself and erase this notion that I am simply a whore.”  
“You won’t deny that you are? Despite the glaring evidence to the contrary?” He thought it funny.  
“I am yours to command and I serve without question. But to know your men undermine me and use me to undermine you is not something I can afford. It is not something I can allow.” She hissed, wanting him to hear he loathing, her anger. An act this was all a delicate dance of power and rank.  
Lotor said nothing, before speaking to Acxa.  
“Acxa, what is the soonest that Stephanie can enter the gladiatorial ring?”  
The woman spoke quickly. “A dawn sir.”

Stephanie could hear his smirk. “You have until dawn to prepare Stephanie, I expect you to correct the situation. Until then-” Dismissed, she walked back to her room alone. The hate filled look Balrung gave her worth it as she left him to face Lotor alone.

The next morning she broke routine, bathing, dressing, eating alone and then making her way to the gladiatorial ring. She had only three weeks of basic training in Galra combat. Years at the Galaxy Garrison.  
But she had what Balrung did not. Insight.

When she stepped out onto the field, she held only a traditional galra blade, and Balrung had what appeared to be an electrically charged cat of nine tails. She’d looked it up. A nasty weapon, it was designed to subdue then burn flesh. If he caught her in it, she’d likely die from cardiac arrest before the shock and burns would kill her.  
“You lying whore! You sold me out!” He was yelling, spittle flying in his rage. Stephanie looked out to the crowd. Lotor sat up high with his generals, focused on her. On this first trial by fire.  
“I said I would not sell you out, and I did not. I reported your treason to my commander and master. He gave me no payment for this information.” She smiled. “You should have paid better attention to my words Balrung.” He roared, holding back barely as they had not been signaled to start the match yet.

As the crowd roared, calling for her blood, her head, a whore, a spy, and worse, she blocked them out, thinking to how to win, how to survive, how to twist it all to come out on top and prove that she would exceed expectations.  
“Today we have a match between the accused, Balrung and his accuser, Stephanie Graves. The crime? Treason against failure. I will pardon the crime of the victor.” Lotor’s word cut through the crowd, silencing them as he let Balrung stare her down, let her stew in her choice to fight for her worth.

“Begin.”

Balrung was fast, but his size was also her asset. The weapon was designed for close combat, and while he was nimble, he was not a human woman who spent her time learning how to take down men twice her size, how to beat stacked odds.  
Stephanie began the fight with running away.

“You outed yourself Balrung! You hated me the moment you met me, and for a while I thought I might earn your acceptance, but in three weeks, all you showed me was that you and every other Galran solider here thought me a whore, a weakness, a doomed failure!” She yelled, inciting the crowd’s hate, their want for violence. Inciting Balrung.  
“You allowed yourself to think I wouldn’t tell my Master of you and your fellows treasonous thoughts and doubts! You are cowards and traitors unworthy to call yourself Galra!” She yelled as she ducked behind a pillar, the crowd howling at her cowardice, at her refusal to fight.  
“Bitch! Fight me! You’re nothing more than a weak human!”  
She came out, throwing the blade at him, missing as it stuck into the sand.  
“You say I’m weak human?” She yelled back, unfastening the chest plate, reaching in to grab at the inner lining.

“I am smarter than you, faster than you, better than you!” She screamed, charging forward, hand gripping the chest plate by the rubber liner, deflecting the electric cables of his weapon and offsetting his balance. Balrung fell to the ground with a clash, and it that moment she put her weight on his arm, ripping his weapon from his hold.

It was split second, she pushed away from him, raising his weapon above hand before bringing it down on his mechanical leg.

The limb sparked and she couldn’t avoid the blast as it overcharged and broke down while he howled in pain and shock. Her own body was screaming as she felt her body be sent in the opposite direction.

It was a race against time now. She had to get to the blade and disable Balrung’s weapon so he couldn’t use it again. His weapon in her hand, it was easy enough to rip the battery from the hilt, but handling the hot core scorched her flesh as she screamed, pain lancing up her arm as her mind raced to block it out, to keep moving. Keep moving or die.

Nose flaring as she breathed deeply, she ran. Tossing off the now useless weapon and running to the blade, Balrung tried to get up on a broken leg, he readied himself to defend and kill her or die for his honor and pride.

The battle was over as soon as her good hand wrapped around the hilt of the blade and her blue eyes met Balrung’s yellow.

“If my master tells me to jump I jump.” She stared her escort of three weeks down. The crowd was screaming, white noise.  
“If he says fight, I fight.” Chanting, she didn’t hear for what.  
“He tells me to kill, I will kill.” She’d never killed before, and now, for the first time, but not doubt not the last, she would.  
“If he says to get on my damn knees and suck his dick?” She hissed, closing the distance between her and the Galra that had done no great harm to her, had only been doing his job, had only been acting as he knew how.  
“I’ll do it Balrung! Because unlike you, unlike all those cowards, I obey my master!” She was shaking, she was scared. She didn’t know how to kill someone.  
“I’m a better solider than you and any of those other Galra could ever hope to be! Because-“ She slammed the blade into his chest, the crunch of metal, the sickening sound of metal pushing into flesh and scraping against bone. 

“ _ **I don’t question my commander!**_ ” As she pulled the blade free, it came away a dark violet.  
“I am not his whore!” She was screaming, the crowd was screaming, and Balrung was bleeding and **afraid.**  
“I’m his weapon!” She slammed the blade home again. Her mind was screaming that she had to make it a show, a display to send a message.  
_“And I will defeat Voltron!” _She pulled the blade free a final time before sending it to it’s final place, in Balrung’s throat, his body falling into the sand. There was cheering in the stands, and Stephanie was wide eyed, not seeing the blood on her hands, on her body, not knowing the shake in her arms, the blood that was her deep red mixing with violet. Wild eyed, she looked to the only one who mattered.__

__He was smiling._ _

__He let them cheer, let the down out his words, calling her the victor. His paladin. She didn’t hear them it was all silent in her skull. He was pleased with her, his smile wicked and cruel and satisfied. She had found his expectation of her. She had done more than meet it.  
She had surpassed it._ _

__The next thing she knew Acxa was by her side at the gate of the gladiatorial ring, escorting her to a doctor, telling her that they were watching her the entire time. That Zethid was impressed even. As she was laid on a table, a needle put in her arm to induce sleep Stephanie could swear she could hear his voice._ _

___“Good girl.”_ _ _

__She smiled as sleep overtook her._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god i should stop writing and posting at 3am


	7. Problems are solved before they arise

Apparently, she’d slept for two days. Waking with cotton mouth, she choked out a request for water, only to have a tall lanky galra doctor slip a tube to her mouth.  
The cool liquid tasted of cucumber but soothed her raw aching throat all the same. 

According to the doctor, she’d suffered from shock as well as burns on her right hand. A few small bruises on her legs and arm from where she’d slammed into Balrung, but nothing debilitating. They’d healed the burns and she was fine to go. The good doctor, (Alren he told her), said that Lotor and his generals were expecting her soon and she was to freshen up and meet them at the command center in an hour. She’d not have an escort, but did she need a map?

Stephanie got up on shaking legs, and said yes. She’d not been in the medical bay yet and didn’t know her way back.  
“You’re admitting a weakness.” Alren said, a bit curious, (justified given her bloody-)  
The sudden flood of the fight came back, and with it, bile. Stumbling to a trash bin, she expelled what little was in her stomach as the doctor watched on, not helping her.  
“You’ve never killed before have you?” He stated, lacking any sort of judgement in his tone. Observational. Once she had purged her body and the shock started set in again, she did her best to answer.  
“No I- we never were taught how to- just defend. Always defend.” The click of his shoes was near and slowly, gently he guided her back to the bed, taking a small cloth and wiping away the traces of her gross and sweat.  
“I will inform Prince Lotor that you are suffering from delayed shock. It’s normal and we see it on occasion from even veteran soldiers. Take your time, rest. Your mental and physical well being comes before Lotor’s need to glorify his paladin’s victory.” Stephanie looked at him sharply. This doctor was either decent, or-  
“What’s... happened since the match?”  
Alren hummed, moving to a table and cleaning a few instruments.  
“For you? Quite a lot I imagine. Killing your previous guard-escort after outing him as a traitor and calling out the hypocrisy of the galra forces at large was a smart move. They don’t fear you, but many are saying how Lotor was smart to take you in and begin to train you as his chosen Paladin. Most have come to accept that whatever… bedroom activities the prince has with you are his business, and you are simply being a good, obedient solider.”  
She glared at the back to Alren’s head. Shock she might be in but-  
“Please, I am a doctor. Inter-species relations is hardly new to me. Plus, had he taken you as a lover, he would have ordered me to ensure your fertility was controlled. All the same, the forces at large have a newfound respect for you. The way you killed Balrung was clever, using the lining of your armor to prevent the discharge from reaching you and crippling him.”

Alren turned to face her, a smile that was so human on his face. He was being a doctor, talking to her in soothing, kind tones and offering her time to process what had happened. Helping her walk through the events.  
“Do you think I can do it? Become a weapon?” The doctor nodded.  
“I took an oath to serve the empire as all Galra do. But I lacked the bloodlust, the rage my peers felt. So I chose to heal them. To remove myself from battle and fight what cannot be won with blades and violence.” He offered her a drink. A green tinged liquid. Water with nutrients, commonly given after fights to help replenish a soldier’s strength.  
“Your fight is not just one of physical necessity, but of mental fortitude. You’re an outsider, so your fights are far more difficult and far more demanding than the average Galra officer. My advice it to push your limits, but not to the point you feel you might break. You body can be healed, but your mind can be destroyed far easier than anything else. Now, rest. Once you’re up let me know and I’ll inform his highness.”

Stephanie thanked the good doctor Alren before she closed her eyes, waiting her the sound of her heartbeat to stop thundering in her ears and the sickness of becoming a murderer to fade.  
It was taking a while, longer no doubt than Lotor would have liked, but she was thankful for the reprieve. Two days rest might be nice, but her brain was a mess. Emotions all over, fear and reason mixing- she had no idea what to expect. His anger? His pleasure? Higher demands? More fights? More-  
“You shouldn’t be so anxious.” Alren’s soothing voice came from the darkness as he tapped away on a screen.  
“All will be well. He will not harm you for being human.” Was she really so easy to read, eye closed, laying is a hospital bed, trying to just piece herself back together?

An hour later she was on her feet. Two hours later she was dressed in a newer, more sleek uniform that fit along with polished armor. She recognized it as akin to the armor his generals wore, but it was lacking in the orange. Replacing the color was a deep violet, which on a galra would have looked rather strange but on her it marked her as different but also liken. She guessed this was done to denote her new title amongst the Galrans, and Lotor’s official adoption of her as his chosen Paladin.

Whatever that would mean in the future.

As Stephanie arrived at the command station she could feel eyes on her as she walked in the halls, hear the whispers of her name, of Lotor’s chosen. The lionless paladin. It didn’t matter. They didn’t call her whore anymore. They didn’t glare, the looked with apprehension and curiosity, sizing her up. Matching a name to face, a figure to a story, a rumor. Her gambit, her fight had paid off.  
Door opened and a pair of blue eyes surrounded by golden yellow met her own. She looked away as she saw him smile.  
“Stephanie, how kind of you to join us. We were beginning to wonder if you ever would.” The generals were the only other ones present, and she relaxed a bit. The fact he was only keeping his most trusted and had dismissed other had to be a good sign right?  
What Stephanie could never have expected was Zethrid all but running up to her and embracing her of all things.  
“I knew you could do it! I told them you had what it takes! Just had to be given a little push. You’re a REAL Galra fighter now.” She was squeezing her tightly, and Stephanie let out a small squeak of pain before the large Galran woman let her go. Ezor and Acxa came up right after, the both of them just as pleased with the outcome of the match. Ezor recounting how she’d made everyone cheer with her dramatic speech, (‘You were just like his highness! They were eating it up!”).  
Acxa just offered up how she was glad that Stephanie had managed to come out not just in one piece, but had proved she was a good choice to be a ‘paladin’. Narti said nothing, but Kova jumped to her shoulder, wrapping around her neck and purred.

Stephanie was uncertain at the sudden display of affection of praise, but it was nice. Comforting to know she was safe if just for now.  
“You did well Stephanie.” His voice was cool, and when she turned towards him she blushed. He was right next to her, his hand reaching out and cupping her chin as was his habit.  
“My generals and I believe that you’ve earned the right to be included in some of our meetings. You’ll still have your training and work, but-“ He leaned in, smirking as she felt her face grow hot, his thumb running over her lips. Why was he touching her so intimately? In her lesson from the druids, even his generals would know the touch to be an intimate one.  
“-You are not yet ready for me to share everything just yet.” She tried to fight the urge to pull away, to move her eyes from his gaze.  
“Understood Master.”  
“Lotor.” He let her chin go and motioned for Acxa to bring something up on screen.  
“Henceforth, you will address me as Lotor in public. You have earned your place with my forces, and I won’t have them question my choice any longer. Now, we received a signal akin to the lions in sector-“

The meeting begun, she listened and offered her thoughts when asked, the back of her mind wondering what her new position would mean.  
Before she knew it, she was back in her cot, uncertain as to what would change.

 

Not much as her itinerary manifested the next morning. Aside from her new uniform, she had a few small meetings scattered in the week with the generals and Lotor, and would be at an ‘on call’ status if she was needed. 

It was another two weeks before she had her first real ‘emergency’.

Menstruation was not something she ever wanted to discuss with anyone in her life, let alone alien doctors. But- bleeding out from an intimate area in a ship full of men and women who could smell blood hardly would be good. So that was how at 4 am, she had called Acxa to her room to explain the situation. It was awkward, with a fair bit of ‘so your species just.. start bleeding? How is that even effective?’ And a lot of ‘That’s uh, not pleasant’. 

By 6am she was in Alren’s office, getting a shot to render her temporarily infertile, and a very short doctor’s memo that for the next few days she was to be given bedrest… As Alren had no idea how long until her ‘ovulation cycle’ would remain active and her system flush out the last of the blood.

It was humiliating. 

What was the worst however was when she found out at the end of her five day’s rest, Lotor wanted to see her in private? Her schedule blank save for his meeting with her. And while that was alarming in itself?  
He expected her to report to him in her rooms.  
To discuss her recent medical complications.

This was not how she expected the tail end of her second month as am alien solider to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not killing Alren, he's just a good guy doing his best.


	8. Freedom is found before it is needed

Lotor’s room was just as she remembered it. Simple, save for his overly large, comically cliché royal bed with silk sheets. But he had changed. No armor this time around, he wore a simple dark blue tunic and leggings, leather like boots in a deep purple lined with that contrasting orange. It made her feel over dressed in her full uniform. He seemed to think the same as he looked her up and down.

“Remove your armor. I don’t intend to have to fight you and really it just makes a casual conversation all the more formal.” He was tired, his worlds lacking an edge to them even though they held that same commanding nature. Stephanie quickly removed the plating neatly setting it at the foot of the couch, remaining standing until he motioned for her to sit across from him.  
For a while, they sat in silence, his eyes half lidded as she squirmed under his gaze. She knew this had to do with the recent medically mandated rest. But why he would want such informality was beyond her.  
“Stephanie,” He began, the pause indicating how he was carefully considering his words, “why did you fail to inform me of your fertility cycles?” Hot embarrassment raced across her face and shame rose in her gut. He would know- hell, he was probably told in detail.  
“I- I did not think on it until it happened sir.”  
“Stephanie.” He was glaring at her now, and her mind raced to correct whatever it was that had upset him.  
“Master, sorry.” He leaned back in his seat, mollified. 

“Good girl. Now, do you know why it is important I know when you are fertile?” She was flush with embarrassment.  
“N-n-n-no master I don’t.” She looked away, knowing how she must have looked. Weak and shamed, embarrassed.  
“Because if you chose to take a lover at this time, the entire plan to have you usurp the paladins of Voltron would be wasted. Not to mention you are still considered mine Stephanie.” He was angry she realized. Tired and angry and possessive. She’d managed to forget that about him. He dominated and demanded control, he would have her submit and obey. Her body _belonged_ to him, even if he didn’t use it.  
“There is no one I would take as a lover Master.” She certainly had noticed the differences in Galra men and women but, none had made her feel anything than appreciation of their unique form of beauty. The same way one appreciated art.  
“And you really think none would take you, **want you** as a lover, _pet?_ ” He hissed, eyes cold and furious. Without realizing it, she was trembling. Eyes wide and face red and-  
“No.” She managed to mummer, looking down, feeling like she’d just walked into a fire.

“You belong to me _pet_. Your skills, your talents, your mind, your body, your sex.” He hissed at her, standing and narrowing the space between them. His hand rested against the space next to her head as he loomed over her. Domination, enforcing her place as his.  
“No one touches you but me. Not even yourself.” He spat, hand darting to grab her chin and forcing her to see the look he wore.

Lust. The craving to dominate, to control her, to own her in every aspect. Yet there was a hesitance there. He wanted, but he would not give in. He would not act on it.

And Stephanie found it made something squirm inside of her. Fear, but something deeper, darker. Carnal.

“I belong to you Master.” She realized that feeling. Arousal. It was frightening because she knew it was wrong. She shouldn’t feel this. It was unhealthy and wrong and he was her captor and there was no safety with him, no true consent and equality between them.  
“I obey only you.” She gasped out the admission, the truth in her fear, her craving of what submission would offer. The illusion of what he’d provide. Safety, protection, caring. The chance to let go and not be afraid.

Lotor’s fury lessened and his blue eyes looked black as he pushed her to the floor, sitting himself on the couch. He pulled her back to his legs, her head resting against his knee and his fingers worked themselves into her hair; he calmed himself by touching her.  
“I did not mean to scare you.” He spoke softer, trying to regain control over the situation.  
“But rumors have begun about your beauty. Your ferocity and brutality. Exotic, you are alluring to more men that I am comfortable with. I cannot punish them, but I can make them understand that you are mine. I do not need to explain, why do I?” She hummed, eyes closing as she felt herself trying to calm the feeling of her own sudden realization of how his actions had made her aware of her own feelings. Her own desires.  
“If they think they can have me, they will try. It would complicate things. It is better that I am known as yours and yours alone. Better to be seen as utterly loyal and in love with my Master than with some commoner.” He hummed in reply, fingers working out a small tangle in her hair.  
“That’s why you have me scheduled here with you all day. To create the illusion that I am here to sate your-“ She blushed, looking up at him suddenly.  
“You _did_ yell out that if I told you to get on your knees and ‘suck my dick’ you would when you killed Balrung. Most Galra men do find that rather erotic. A woman willing to come to bed in the blood of her enemy and service him. It was a rather-“ He smirked at her, that look of unabashed lust making her eyes look away, unable to hold his gaze. How did this happen? Why would he even debase himself with her?  
“-graphic image to illicit. One I must admit is very enticing now that you’re at my feet.” 

Her mouth opened and she couldn’t help the small strangulated sound coming from the back of her throat. This was wrong. He was her captor and he was manipulating her emotions, toying with her, using her; she’d kept her dignity, her pride, kept herself as emotionally detached as she could. Stockholm syndrome was not for her, she couldn’t, wouldn’t be tricked into sympathizing, into feeling for him. For any of them.  
So why did the implication sound… gratifying?

“Do you want me to? To order you to service me?” She blinked up at him, trying to understand his motives. He’d teased her and she’d dismissed his earlier attentions as ploys to illicit her fear and obedience. So was this just a trick, a ploy, a trap? Why now? Was the notion of violence and sex appeal so great?  
Her mind provided that yes, for a Galra, it was.  
For him, this was a line, a boundry he wanted to cross but wouldn’t unless she wanted to. He wouldn’t steal this from her, he would not rob her of every agency she had over her own self.  
His fingers in her hair pulled back; strands fell away, ticking her neck.  
He watched her and in silence, they stared at each other. It was charged in the air, the crossroads that neither would cross, that was forbidden yet-  
“Master.” She had to make a choice, a decision of what she would do, where she would take her control.  
“I want to please you.” Stephanie moved, crawling between his legs to rest the side of her face on his inner thigh as she looked up at him.  
“I want to find release. I want-“ She was looking up his body, imagining what he might be under the tunic, of what it might feel like to be touched, to be held if just for a few greedy, stolen moments. To feel base and human if only in blind ecstasy.  
“-I want to stop feeling afraid, if just for a while.” Something in his gaze softened, as he leaned back shifting to spread his legs wider, as his hands cupped her face and gently tugged her up his body so she sat in his lap, straddling him, her own legs burning with how far he was forcing them open. She was exposed and open to him, for him.

“My sweet explorer. My Pet, my chosen, my Paladin-Stephanie.” He breathed her name like a silent prayer.  
“Do you think I will love you?” He looked into her eyes and she met him. This was not love. It couldn’t be love, but it would be something. A dark craving, they could satisfy and know it would not be questioned, seen only as a means to an end, a shared satisfaction.  
“No Master.” She leaned into him, her hands slipping up his neck, wrapping in his hair as she kissed his neck, wanting to wrap herself in his warmth, in his embrace.  
“It will be my offering. Supplication.” She sucked on his skin, a rush racing down to her core as he moaned to the graze of her teeth.  
“And from me?” He asked, his hands on her hips, holding her there. Claiming her.  
“Rule me, control me. Let me have a true freedom. Grant me release, take me away from everything.” She whimpered as he pulled back to kiss her, to his rough demanding mouth. He tasted like the fruit he’d fed her that night. Melon, sweet and soft and good.

“Then I will take you. Own you.” She moaned, pushing her body into his, crying out as his hands held too tightly, as hips ground into her own, something thick and firm pushing against her covered core that felt like it was beating with her heart and needing something only the man who was dominating her could provide.  
“So long as you offer yourself, I will take you.” His kiss was hard on her neck, his teeth making her cry out as he bit her, drew blood.  
“I won’t ever order this from you my sweet. Never fear this from me.” He pulled back, the red of her blood on his lips.  
“Offer, and I will take. Ask, and I will give.” She let go, let his hands be the only thing holding her up as she felt something snap in her, as she felt herself fall and embrace what he had made her to become.

“I will give you your stars.” Hot quick kissed up her neck.  
“I will give you knowledge.” Hands slipping up her uniform, she moaned into his mouth, wanting him, wanting to let go.  
“I will grant you release.” He claimed her cry, the scream of his name as he thrust against her, pulled her so there would be no escape, could be no escape from this path she’d chosen.

Stephanie cast away the final chains of loyalty to a world that she’d been born to.  
In exchange, she embraced the stars and all their dark promises. She embraced the prince who would give them to her.

She welcomed it when he called her his Paladin.


	9. Passion is found as it is craved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut

As she gave in, Stephanie realized a few key things, oh so helpfully provided by her lesson back with the druids.  
One, galra men and women were compatible physically with humans and in fact, able to reproduce provided both parties were fertile, (which she would not be in the foreseeable future).  
Two, it was common for partners to leave marks on each other in the heat of passion and bare them as signs of pride; commenting on them was taboo as to do so was rude, unlike on earth where some considered the marks shameful. To a galra it was the sign of a skilled lover, (Lotor had already bitten her neck, he was currently working his mouth on the underside of her jaw, drawing out tiny whimpers and needy moans as he refused to allow her his lips in a kiss).  
Three, stamina wise, a galra outclassed a human typically in bed unless extensive foreplay was involved and most galra did not participate in foreplay once their partner was prepared, (she was not about to simply be a quick fuck, Stephanie might have a one-night stand but she’d be damned before she didn’t get her money’s worth as the saying went.).  
Four, the louder one was, the more virile they couple was considered, and so being loud to the point of being obnoxious was ideal, (which suited her just fine).  
Five- Lotor liked his women pliant, yielding and soft.

She figured that out by the way he focused on her thighs and how he kept squeezing them and muttering how good she felt, so small and delicate in his lap. Plush and giving, perfect for when he planned to bend her over the table and mount her like a common beast. His voice, usually so regal and deviously sinful was now coarse against her mind, fingers going against velvet, a rough touch that made her shiver from her neck, down her spine, right to her heating sex.  
Lotor was in control of her, even as she sat astride him, working her into a heated, needy frenzy with just his hands on her legs, keeping them spread open while his mouth tormented at her neckline, jaw and ears. And oh did he torment. A soft kiss behind an ear, he started with the husky whisper of how he planned to simply cast an illusion of their affair, of her beholden to him with her heart. But he liked this better, they would _enjoy_ this better. She would not be left disappointed. Did she like it, did she find it good when he played on her skin?  
His mouth ghosted over the shell of her ear, tip of his tongue brushing before he gave a small suckle to the lobe, mouthing over the scar where she’d once wore earrings, long torn out and scarred over from a childhood schoolyard fight. She mewled his name, pawing as his head, fingers in white silken hair and massaging his scalp with her fingernails while he hummed, nose running down her jaw before he kissed up and down, never letting her find his lips with her own. An agony she didn’t know she wanted from him until he began the torment most enjoyable.

Stephanie also realized that Lotor would not stop talking. The man was good with his hands and mouth, but he knew the effect of his voice, and more, he knew what it would do to her as they began their carnal dance.  
“You’re so _needy._ ” He hissed at her, mockingly admonishing how she kept softly begging his name and trying to get him to kiss her, to let her taste his mouth again. She wanted to bite his lips, make him stop talking, stop teasing her. She wanted to make his face flush with as much desire as she was feeling, make him fall into the pleasurable waves of lust as he was having her do in his arms.  
“But you’re such a good girl, such a sweet pet. I know you want this.” One of his hands was at the base of her spine, sliding the top half of her uniform up and away from her body, his other hand gently tugging her hair back so she couldn’t move her head close enough to try and steal his words off lips to satisfy her wants.

“You want me to kiss you, to let you have a taste again don’t you?” Stephanie’s reply was a breathy yes followed by a sharp gasp as he tugged on her hair. A tiny throb of almost pain at her skull, it caused her hips to buck into him, that ache of her legs spread open so far, a pleasing burn.  
Just the right amount of ache, the right amount of need and want and denial to make her submission to him more and more satisfying.

“Naughty-“ he said, voice catching a light lit as if he might sing for her, “-only good girls and obedient pets get rewarded. And you want to be good don’t you? Don’t you desire to be my obedient little pet?” He asked, letting go of her hair and head so he could pull the clinging material of her top up, nudging her arms to lift so the garment could be removed.  
“Yes, master. I want to be good. Want to please you.” She felt the air on her skin, the heat of his eyes as they greedily ran down her almost bare top. Pride surged in her as his gaze slowed on her chest, as he smiled wickedly at her breasts and how her bra, despite being plain and rather restricting to her form, she was still quite endowed.  
“That is what I thought.” One hand found her chin and she bent into the touch like a cat, nuzzling his palm and kissing it before he offered each finger to her lips. Soft tender kisses to each digit she closed her eyes to relish in the sensations, to let herself go to his control. Men in the past she’d been with always rushed, always thought that she wanted to be humiliated, to be handled like she wanted to be hurt. But that wasn’t entirely right or close to what she craved. She wanted to let herself be used, be treated like she was wanted and worthy of tender affections yet also reminded that she was at another’s whims. That she was controlled and her pleasure was only at the behest of another.

Bedroom games were not a field she had any vast experience in, but she enough to know that Lotor was reading her with each movement, taking his time to learn what gave her pause, pleasure, what would bring her to that precipice and how he could control her through her own desires behind closed doors. He was a brilliant tactician, even when it came to sex and she regretted the fact she had met him as she had, that the basis of this, of the sex between them was born from captivity and necessity. From his position in his society and her own. In another life, she would have fallen at his feet long ago, happy to have such an accommodating and talented lover. Now, she felt only a want to give herself up to find and chase the freedom that only sex could bring, the only freedom he could allow with her.

It was bittersweet, but as Lotor looked back up at her eyes, done appraising her in his arms, they held each other’s gaze. They both craved something from each other, and they could offer the satisfaction the other sought, so long as they gave into it. In the knowledge that this was never going to be love, never going to be right or accepted or understood. But it was enough.

As he kissed her and moaned into her mouth as she felt tears begin at the corner of her eyes, they knew this would have to be enough.

“From now on pet, you will wear what I send you.” The kiss broken, the moment ended, her eyes fluttered as she tried to parse his meaning. Understanding flooded Stephanie went his fingers traced the bottom hem of her cotton regulation bra.  
“This is hideous. Tomorrow, I’ll have proper intimate attire sent to you.” He was all command, unyielding as she whimpered. She liked her regulation bras. What was wrong with-  
“I want to see your skin, your features should be accented not muted.” There it was, smug male lust in his gaze at her chest and his knowledge how he could do just that. Control her in such an intimate way.  
“Would it be lace?’ Stephanie wasn’t fond of the starchy material, and no doubt it would show through her relatively skin tight uniform. Somehow, she doubted Lotor or any other male even considered the more logistical half of one’s underwear.  
“Oh pet, such a good suggestion. Dark lace, I’ll have it made thin and soft. So when no one is looking, I’ll be able to feel your arousal and when we’re alone?” He leaned up and she leaned back, wilting under the intensity of his look.  
“It will be weak enough I can tear it with my fangs. Strong enough to support you, weak enough to break under my touch. Won’t that be perfect? Wearing something that only I will see, only I will know you have under that tight curve hugging uniform for my pleasure and gratification? Under the armor no one would know. Just me. You will wear it because I demand it.” That finality in his tone, that hard commanding that held no room for question only her submission.

And what submission she gave, nodding as she leaned to him, fingers running through his hair as she cooed out her enjoyment to his greedy touch to the last upper garment, the annoyed male sound as the hooks refused to behave and yield as quickly as she had. It was so silly, so humanizing to feel that brief fumble of his control, she couldn’t help her smile, kissing his head, his hair, excited at the prospect of his tormenting reaching her breasts.  
“Stephanie-“ Her name drew her back to him, the cotton bra loose on her and she leaned away from him again, arms falling from his face so they could toss the offending thing away. Lotor’s eyes were so expressive, she mused, and she felt a tiny bit bold as he drank in the sight of her completely exposed breasts. A small rotation of her hips, she canted her chest forward, her actions earning a growl from the galran male.  
“Do not test me pet. You will be rewarded soon enough. _Behave_ ”. She sighed, going limp for him waiting for him to take control again. His hand at the small of her back, he guided her to sit up, leveling her chest with his mouth and-

Hot wet strokes, his tongue ran down her neck to her clavicle. Nips with his fangs leaving tiny red imprints against her skin, they were sharp reminders of how dangerous he was and how he could hurt her if he was so inclined. The sensory input was delicate, and closing her eyes, letting her head fall forward, her hair cascaded over them both a cover for the salacious acts he was committing upon her heated flesh.  
This was exactly what she had asked for, and he was giving to her in full.

It was the first time since they began this forbidden act that he was wordless, preferring to nip at her skin and then sooth the sting away with his tongue. If only to break his motioned would he stop to go back to her neck, find a spot and bite until his fangs threatened to break her skin. Each time he did so she cried out his name, begging with soft pleas for what she didn’t know. And each time she cried out, she could feel his smirk, his pleasure in knowing he had such a hold over her in this primal fashion.  
By the time his mouth was at her breasts Stephanie was nearly crying, her entire body humming and wanting unable to feel past that edge of delightful agony.

The moment he brought a nipple into his mouth and began to suck, to have his teeth hold her in place, capturing her areola while his tongue worked the sensitive bud she screamed and grabbed his hair. Too much, too harsh, too **good**.  
He held her stead as she began to shake in his hold, as her eyes watered, lost to feeling and to him, to the sharp sudden roughness of his mouth while his hands rubbed soothing circles into the small of her back. He was cruel, so cruel to do this to her and she loved him for knowing how it was making her come undone. How he had read her so perfectly and knew what she wanted before she had.

When one hand ghost up to pinch the peak that his mouth could not hold, her orgasm ripped through her like tidal wave, his name cast out into the room and to the stars that surrounded them. He did not stop, forcing her to ride it out as her hips canted gently towards him, desperate as he came away from the abused tit with a wet pop.

The spot was an angry red, and Lotor’s breath on the wet and tender spot made her whimper.  
When he began to repeat his actions on the other nerve filled bud, Stephanie was fully aware she was crying, her self control gone as his hand now abused her red swolled peak and making her ride the ghost of her orgasm all over again.

Yet, her master was cruel, and ended his abuse right as she was at the cusp of her release, his wicked smile and eyes darken eyes filled with a sadistic joy in her red, tear stained cheeks.  
“So good my pet, you scream so beautifully, so loudly. The guards down the hall no doubt heard you- do you like it that much? Are you really that sensitive for me? So responsive for your _master?_ ”  
Stephanie looked down from the veil of hair that covered them both, nodding slightly as Lotor’s smile widened.  
“Shhh, shh, it’s alright my sweet pet, my little star.” A new endearment, she whimpered as he pushed at her thigh, reminding her how wide he’d kept her legs, how sore and pained they were. It was a perfect contrast to the afterglow of her orgasm and her near orgasm.  
“Do you need more?” He asked, his voice a whisper, a dark secret only they could hold. His fingers ran over her covered sex and she shook as she felt just how sensitive she’d become, how responsive she was. How even with the special leggings, the moisture had managed to begin to soak the inner material to the point where her underthings were likely ruined.  
“Oh Stephanie, my Stephanie. Shh, shh, don’t fret.” Her entire body was trembling as his fingers kept gliding up and down her swollen mound, pushing against her and testing her responses. Her hips kept trying to canter forward to his touch but her legs burned in the position, it was too much.  
“I will give you all you want, I promise. I am a generous master aren’t I?” He brushed her hair from her face with his free hand, the other unrelenting at it played with her heated core.  
“My little star, you are so weak right now, so tender. Why don’t we rest? Let you relax?” His legs slowly began to close, allowing her own to slowly follow. The burning pain of her held position was suddenly at the forefront of her mind, and she whimpered as he soothed her with his praises, with little kisses on her face. Her chin, her jaw, her eyelids and nose. He was so tender and gentle with her as he moved them both. When his legs had come to a close she was panting, falling limply forward into him.

For a while, he let her remain like that. Draped over him, shaking and crying from the pain and pleasure.  
“Stephanie.” His voice was that soothing tone, that gentle caress over her heightened senses.

His hand was at the front of her, cupping her throbbing core when Lotor’s words turned sharp and commanding.  
“Come.”  
She had never in her life thought she would orgasm from words alone, from being told to do so, but like all things with Lotor, he had taken from her what she didn’t know she wanted to give. Her body found it’s release with a pitiful whine of his name as she felt him squeeze her cunt, her trembling increasing as he let her go and she went slack.

Silence, he hummed as stroked her back like she was an overgrown cat, seeming fine with having her in his arms a weakened mess. Perhaps this was how he liked her most of all. Lost to him, pliant and submissive. The woman he’d chosen to be his paladin did not mind it in the slightest.

“We need to get up Stephanie. Can you do that for me my star? Yes- good girl. It’s alright, I have you. Slowly now. Slowly.” She knew this was in way, aftercare, that she was still lost to that place where she was utterly compliant and his and loving his control over her. Yet he was being so tentative she found it was alright. She could stay like this for a while longer. There was so much more she wanted to do with him.  
For him.

Sliding down to the floor, he moved with her to ensure she was comfortable before stepping away, tugging of his tunic which she realized from the discoloration, was marked with her tears and his own sweat. All this time he’d been tormenting her and himself as well, her eyes grazing over the pressing girth of his own desire held tight behind his leggings.  
“Does it satisfy you?” He asked, making her look up at him, blinking with wonder to his white hair sticking to his neck and seeing the thin sheet of sweat on his neck, the flush to his lavender skin.  
“You undo me my pet. You make me feel this craving for you, this-“ His hand cupped the bulge, emphasizing his size for her.  
“-This is will fill you soon. Over and over my little star, I plan to fill you with myself, to make you sheath me in every way. Mark you as mine from the inside out. Your body will take it. Again and again until you’re overflowing with it, with me. Your body will never be satisfied with another when I am finished with you. Oh my good, sweet, perfect girl.” Lotor was talking himself up, his own words serving to arouse them both further.

“I doubt I ever will be finished with my claiming of you. You face is too expressive. This look of want, of lust and submission- I love it.” He growled out, reaching down to cup her chin and guide her with him as he walked backwards to his bed until he sat at it’s edge.

“Take your time. _Explore_ my little traveler, my paladin. Undress me and learn me.” He was guiding her hands to his boots, the clasps that held them up and letting her take some control, some actions on him.  
She did what she wanted to do, what she felt was right and wrong and utterly giving up any resistance to him. Her hands held his calf and when she lifted her leg, her lips found the base of his foot. Delicate feather light kisses to the material, she traced up her leg until her mouth found the metal of the clasp, pulled back so she could undo it and slowly peel the material from his body.  
Each inch that was exposed, was another inch she kissed, another inch she gave her full attention. Lotor’s gaze was focused on her as she repeated the motion on the other boot, taking her time, admiring, relishing the way his muscles flexed under her hands, the way he kept his breathing so even and how he didn’t touch her and said nothing. In the silence she felt peaceful, calm. She was offering supplication. Submission and service. She was rewarded with his form, firm and giving, his legs moving to her guidance and as the second boot fell to the flood with a dull sound and she looked to him for permission, he smiled.

A crooked finger, she crawled up he lap, cheek on his thigh as he lifted her hand to his own arousal. The heat and firm flesh under the fabric telling her of a promise that would leave her lost in the space between them. Flung among the very stars she’d begged him for. Stars he’d already brought to her eyes twice in cascading orgasm.  
“Please.” Stephanie whispered into his thigh.  
“Please, please, please master.” Her fingers ran across the hem of his leggings and he laughed. It was deep and joyful, happy and carefree as he smiled, lifting his body up to peel the material away. Pale lavender flesh exposed, a white trail of fine hairs where his naval would be, leading to the darkening skin as Stephanie got her first view of her master’s length.  
“Is this what you want my little explorer? This?” His words were mocking in their knowing. She swallowed the pool of saliva in her mouth, the hunger in her a sudden inferno she’d never noticed before.

He was longer than his fingers, her own. Maybe eight, nine inches? What surprised her was his girth. He was larger than a human male, thicker but not impossible. A bit of stretching and she thought he’d fill her up perfectly. Snug and tight and she’d be so full of him and he’d burn so good inside her. He’d make her a ruined mess by the day’s end, and when she’d left she knew she would feel the ghost of their coupling for hours if not a day or two. Her mind was giving her the anatomy of a typical galran male and even then, he was exceptional. Perfect and more than his peers. Better.

The look she gave him was pleading, beseeching as she parted her lips in silent question.  
“Explore my pet, take your reward.”

The dark head of his cock was smooth and slanted, the pearly bead of semi-opaque fluid tasting a sour bitterness that was not entire unlike cum, but not unpleasant.  
She moaned, wanting more of it. Wanting to drink it down, have on her skin and have him use it to mark her, claim her, own her and possess her. Kitten licks down his shaft, she admired more and more the differences of his body and human man’s. His cock was just as vein covered, one particular vein on the underside provoking a rough growl from Lotor as she ran teeth over it. But every inch of his length there were ridges, raised edges with a little give. They would glade smoothly in and out of her she imagined, but stimulate her walls so well once inside her.  
Human men had their cocks called velvet encased steel. But Lotor was silk and muscle. Firm with give. His skin was so soft she was sorely tempted to just run her hands up and down him for hour, rubbed it against her like she was a cat. It was pulsating in time with his heart, twitching each pump of blood. Even in that soft silken state his cock jut up proudly, just like how he stood. Tall, demanding her attention.  
Her worship.

Lotor gasped her name as she engulfed the entirety of the head into her mouth, stretching wide to accommodate his size. Her tongue swirled around him, throat swallowing saliva and precoma while her fought his own need to control and dominate her.  
“Master.” She came off him with a wet sound, the tip of him glistening as a string of spit clung from it to connect with her lips. He was breathing deeply, eyes staring at her so intensely with his lust she wanted to tell him it was alright, she could explore later if he wanted her now. But this was not just about her submission, it was about her reward for her loyalty. For her service, for her understanding of just this twisted perversion of power between them.

“I- On earth we sometimes have sprays that help relax the throat. Ah- maybe you-“ His eyes brightened with a mirth as he laughed again.  
“Shh-“ He soothed her sudden fear she’d embaraassed herself.  
“I know what you mean. I must admit, most women who try to perform on me either don’t bother asking or try and choke.” He pushed her back to sit on her knees and wait while he walked to what she assumed was his bathroom, returning with a small bottle.  
“Drink, it numbs the throat a short while but-“ He was grinning, there was a secret he wasn’t telling her.  
“-do try to not get addicted. I plan to spend myself in more gratifying places that down that delicate little throat.” Stephanie smiled back at him, taking the bottle and sipping it. Evergreen mint, he told her just a few sips until she felt it hit the back of her throat.  
It took a few moments, but when it hit her, she flung the bottle behind her much to Lotor’s amused laughter. Laughter that became as shout as she took him in her hands and began to guide each inch of him down her now numb throat. Her gag reflex had always been good when it came to pleasing her lovers, but this was more than any other, better than any other.  
His girth tested her jaw most of all, and the length of him slid down with ease. She could feel a bump in her throat and she held him there, staying still to hold her breath. Reaching up, she held out her palm hoping he’d understand.

His fingers laced with hers as his breathing was deeper, more rough. She guided his hand down as she sat up on her knees, gliding his fingers on that small place on her throat where he could feel the tip of himself inside her.  
“ _Oh **pet**_ -“ He moaned deep and made her skin turn to gooseflesh as she lifted off of him, breathing in deeply before sliding him down once more. Keeping his hand at her neck, letting him feel her fucking her face with his cock. Her tongue moved as he slid in and out as much as she could manage, moaning on occasion to send Lotor into a full body shudder.

“Yes.” He hissed suddenly, hand finding her hair and grabbing it. A sharp breath through her nose, she looked up at him in alarm at the sudden action. He was a man lost at the precipice, close to reaching his own nirvana.  
“Brace yourself pet.” He pulled her down cock, grunting as he bottomed out, as tears came up to Stephanie’s eyes at the sudden roughness, the sudden stolen control.  
“You have been so good. But I fear I need just a bit more from you my star, I can have that can’t I?” He was wild in his lust, absolutely at a loss of his own inhibitions and Stephanie went slack. Silent permission for him to use her, find his release in her body, in her submission and his domination of her.  
His hips thrust up as he forced her head down, the wet sounds of her throat being filled, of spit and precome escaping her mouth as he chased his release in her throat. Breathing was hard, it hurt, his pull on her hair made her whimper but when he pulled her tight to his groin, white hairs ticking her face she screamed in bliss as she felt fluid rushing down her esophagus. Swallow after swallow she didn’t want to lose him, to have it spill and escape her.

When he let go and she pulled back, white clung to his deep violet cock, still firm and erect bobbing in the air in front of her, thin tendrils of spit connecting her face to it’s violator. Stephanie’s jaw hurt but she chased the thin lines of spit and cum, moaning as she lapped at his head, sucking the tip and tonging the slit, trying to draw out more of the bitter seed that he’d spilled too deep for her to properly taste. Ravenous, she could vague hear him say as he fell back onto his bed, letting her chase the remnants of his orgasm, swallow the evidence of what she once might have called a sin.

Panting as she sat back on the floor, she waited for his bidding, waited for his command. Then with a deep rumbling, he gave her direction.  
“Stand.”

She couldn’t have moved fast enough, even as her legs protested.  
Yet the sight of him, nude and laid bac k on the dark sheets that cast such a stark contrast to his pale skin made her flush with a wave of sudden awareness of how slick she was, how she wasn’t bare entirely, and how even after he’d cum, his cock remained aroused and frim, ready for another orgasm and likely release.  
“I had intended to wait, but you were so good. Too good. Are all human women so talented?” He was smiling and looking at her with a base affection, that look of a carefree man who was hiding nothing from his lover. Yet his question made something in Stephanie stir. She didn’t like it.  
“No.” Her tone came out petulant and it made him laugh. Was she offended that he’d suggested he’d take another human lover? A bit. He’d chosen her, and she wouldn’t be replaced. She couldn’t afford to be replace.  
She didn’t want to be replaced.

“More the reason you are _mine. _I only want and take the most exceptional. The best. And you my sweet pet, my dearest Stephanie, are truly exemplarily. Both as a human and as a woman.” He stood in front of her, his hands grabbing her hips and forcing her to feel the tip of his erection against her stomach. Sticky and warm, a bead of pre wetting her skin.__

“Are you aroused for me pet?” He asked her, words ghosting over her as he bent into her neck, kissing the marks he’d left before. Tender and bruised, she whimpered at the reminder of his claims on her body, the way he’d gone about ensuring that she would know to who she belonged to in the coming days.  
“Wet and welcoming? Human women are supposed to be so receptive when ready- wet and slick. They are also tight but can be pained and harmed if not properly prepared. Shall we prepare you Stephanie? Shall I stretch you open with my fingers? Open your cunt so you will be able to take each inch of me on the first thrust?” She shivered and nodded, licking her lips and tasting him still there on her tongue. He stole her thoughts, her confusion. He grounded her in their shared perversion. In knowing just what she craved.  
“Strip off your things, I want to see what you look like under there. I want to see what my pet looks like exposed.”

Her hands shook as she reached for the strips and ties. The clasps and zipper. Peeling it away she blushed as it bunched around her thighs. The smell of her arousal was heady and strong, and the sound of Lotor’s sharp inhale and squeeze of her hips told her he found it pleasing. Not to mention the material was shining with evidence of her wetness, her body’s response to his stimulation. His grant of her orgasms.  
“Once more, I’ll have new intimates sent to you.” He said, reaching down to tug on the soaked cotton panties she’d worn. They were ruined anyway no doubt.  
“Crotch- less I think. Hmm yes. I like that. You would be nice and ready to serve me at any moment. No need to tear them off then. I could command you pull your leggings down and fuck you as I pleased.” He circled behind her, reaching past the bunched up cloth round her thighs and pulling down on them sharply.  
“Yes, thin and crotch-less. So no one would be the wiser. This-“ His hand came down on her ass with a loud smack, her scream at the sudden pain catching her off guard.  
“I like the sight of it. Pale and round. Giving, its made for fucking. For helping the impact when you’re fucked like a whore bent over a desk. My bed. The command post.” The last suggestion given darkly. A promise of something utterly forbidden. Scandalous and yet all the more appealing for that exact reason. He didn’t stop, like when he’d take her top, he was using his words as a weapon carving into her mind with everything she wanted yet couldn’t voice.

__“Are you my whore pet? Are you my little slut?” He hissed at her, and the rush of anger came boiling as she spun, hands grabbing in hair in a sudden woke fury.  
“ **Never.** ”_ _

__He grinned and kissed her as she kicked off the leggings and her soaked underwear. The slickness of her inner things making her shiver as the air cooled it on her skin. His kiss was rough and hard. Fangs grazed her tongue and lips as they moaned into each other’s mouths, as her hands tangled in his hair while his one hand pulled her flush to his body, cock pushing into the cleft of her ass while his other hand held her neck, twisting it to keep her lips locked with his own._ _

__Anger made the kiss painful, which in turn, made it all more exquisitely divine in the pleasure it gave them both._ _

When he pulled back, that frantic look of want in his eyes was untamed, unhampered and a warning bell sounded in her head. Galra men dominated their lovers often enough, and when they lost themselves with their lovers, the women would be at the mercy of a male who would not stop until he’d felt his partner was sufficiently claimed.  
“ _Claim me._ ” Her words had him frozen.  
“Claim your pet, your star, your explorer, your chosen, _your paladin _.” Stephanie whispered, watching emotions race in his eyes, the carnal understanding filling them with primal need.__

____“Give me everything Master.” He roared, lifting her up and tossing her to the bed, a savage satisfaction in him, a pride and passion in the way he smiled down at her as the sheets tangled under her body and he crawled on top of her._ _ _ _

____“Lotor, Lotor, my master-“ He was laughing in triumph. Her last wall gone as she gave in to this final act of surrender. This final culmination of her submission._ _ _ _

“ _My_ Lotor.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part one of two for that good shit  
> I got u thirsty fam
> 
> I got u


	10. Truth is found before it is wanted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part 2 of 3 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Her mind was filled with him. His body heat over her own. White hair tickling her face and neck as he loomed over her and growled out her name and her titles, the endearments he’d given her to signal his approval. The scent of his sweat, of him, raw and primal. The pressure of his gaze, coveting on her face, on her body. The way his hands held her tight, forcing her to remain still as his legs shoved her knees apart. The silk of his bed, the too soft mattress, she was lost to the sensations to him and everything he had wrapped up in.

 

Stephanie was smiling as he growled at her, grabbing her and telling her what to do, to grab at her breasts, to spread her legs for him, to stop laughing or he’d silence her. Stephanie couldn’t help it, the sudden euphoria of her ultimate surrender flowing in her as she embraced his carnal grin, the brutal passion he was showing her and how he wanted her little defiance. Excuses to dominate her and rule her body in every way. When she touched him he slapped her hands away and kissed her with a force that hurt- her lips were bruised no doubt but the dull throb went down her body to her core. Her sex pulsing with want as she opened her legs to him, for him.

 

Her mind was racing with thoughts of how to please him, to pleasure him, satisfy him and his lust woken. The primal, carnal, insatiable lust that ran in his blood and was coded right into his DNA. Stephanie was certain the druids who had filled her thoughts with stolen knowledge didn’t anticipate her using the biology they had provided her in such salacious acts but oh she would. Tools in her arsenal, weapons in her hands, the woman once lost to a sea of stars grabbed her prince, growling back at him and pushing her soaking wet core against his bare leg. Slick clung to his skin as he hissed her name, bending down to grab hold of her neck with his teeth.

 

Bestial, he held her still as he reached down and began to fondle her sex, fingers slipping over her mons, dipping into her cleft, parting labia so he could find her clitoris. His mouth and fangs held her throat, growls rising and falling in his pleasure at her limp limbs and body yielded to him, her tiny whimpers and mewls to indicate her need and want and readiness for him all the things she knew a galran male would want from a lover. He was pushed to this, to the rough hold, to forcing her down and threatening her with pain and false violence that would never come from fangs on her neck. She trusted him. She shouldn’t have, knew to do so was a way into madness, into emotions and things deeper than loyalty, but to ride this current, rather than swim against it?

It was so sinfully good.

 

She yelped when he pushed a finger into her roughly. Slick as she was, the sudden intrusion was fast, and her body hadn’t expected it with how earnest he had been in exploring her labia and massaging her clit. But that finger inside of her crooked, beckoned her pleasure like a skilled snake charmer, and his thumb pushed on her clit at the outside. Double pleasure, a skilled lover’s touch, Lotor had done this act enough times to know a woman’s body in fine detail, and he was using that to undo her.

 

Mewls of his name turned into soft pitiful pleas, her hips gently trying to rock into his palm, to grind and gain a friction greater than what he was providing. The hard, dominating growl that vibrated against her neck made her whimper, hips sinking to the soft bedding as she was forced to yield. He was in charge, he was in control, and he would claim her how he wanted.

 

Her pleasure would come when he saw fit to give it. Until then, it was only at his behest that she receive any at all before him.

 

As he added the second finger, Stephanie gasped and moaned deeply, feeling just what he was doing. The two digits worked in tandem, pushing at her walls, opening her up little by little, stretching her. Preparing her. Making her ready for when she would take his cock. The thought of him inside her, filling her, making her burn with how full he would make her feel step the woman into a spiral of dark thoughts.

 

His cock pushing at her walls, tight from so many orgasms, she’d throb and he would growl at her, as her body would refuse to let him leave her channel. His hard thrusts that would leave no room for his cum, forcing it to gush out and froth at her labia, slipping down her body to soak the sheets only for him to fuck her harder as punishment for daring to allow his seed escape her. Him spraying down her channel, deep and thick and hot and forcing her hips up at an angle, letting her body’s hunger for his seed and gravity work his cum into her empty womb, knowing there was no risk, knowing that his instinct for claiming her would have him trying to ascertain in the coming days if his seed took, subconsciously angry when it would fail. How he’d take her again, filling her up as his primal hunger for claiming and breeding would demand it of him, to fuck her until she smelled like him. Like sex and his cum, his seed, his claim. His and only his.

 

She wanted that. To belong to him and for other galran men to smell it on her, in her, smeared into her skin, that their prince had fucked her into abandon, that their prince had claimed her like a common female and had no intention of allowing another male to try and claim her. She wanted to be _owned_.

 

Lotor must have sense her perversions, her visions of her place under him in so many ways, as he let her throat go with a dark, heated chuckle.

“Needy pet.” He hissed, eyes wide and fangs on full display.

“You’ll submit now won’t you?” He asked, voice deeper, accented by how lost they both had become to this carnal embrace. Stephanie moaned in reply and he growled deep in his chest, a rumbling that resonated down his body, a tiny tremor she could feel in-between her own breasts. In a place she didn’t want to consider.

“Answer _pet_.” His jaw snapped at the title and she whimpered, leaning her head back to signal she was still submitting, still wanting his approval, his touch.

 

“Yes-“ The word came out a low hiss as his fingers felt like they danced inside her, rubbing the small bump in her cunt that offered more and more slick with each stroke.

 _“-Master!”_ Her scream was sharp as her hips bucked, his third finger added. He was pushing so hard on her clit, rolling it with his thumb and flicking back and forth over it. His fingers pushing at her squeezing walls, crooking over that bump, that spot that gave more and more of her juices to lubricate her passage, to ease what her body so craved to be filled with.

 

Up and up she felt the sensations rise. Like a tide, it came in and before he let it get too high, he’d slow his thrusts, his fingers simply pushing at her opening, making it yield for him. For what would soon come. Lotor did this over and over. Her hands fisted in the sheets, her teeth worried her lips, her eyes pinned shut she was helpless. Lost and needing him to ground her. Tears started to form as he stopped stretching her walls, choosing to begin thrusting his fingers into her, franticly rub her clit with his thumb in a mocking dance of what was to come.

“Do you want release?” He panted, kissing her neck, moving up her jaw.

Her begging began a babble, a litany of his name and pleas of yes, yes, yes.

“No pet. You can’t come for me yet. Not until you have _permission_.” She cried out sharply. He was cruel, her prince, her master. So unbearably cruel.

“I’m going to fuck you, then deny you. I won’t fill you with cum until you’ve _earned_ it, you greedy, needy thing. My cum hungry little paladin.” Filthy, dirty, depraved, he was going to kill her like this. Make her ride her want until she broke completely. Until she was nothing more than a limp doll to decorate his bed and-

 

She screamed in rage as he pulled his hand away, flingers slipping out of her in a display of pure debauchery. Wet, thing sticky trails of her arousal clung to them, spider silk thin strands between his fingers, her body bucked up against and again as it tried to have release, orgasm, only for there to be nothing. No pressure, to stimulation. He was denying her.

 

The image however, of him looking at his slick covered hand with such wonder, such unbridled hunger however left her moaning. The sight of him drawing his hand to his mouth, licking away the fluid, cleaning himself like a cat might, drew more whimpers of want and need from the back of Stephanie’s throat. He knew she wanted him, wanted to please him but she was failing. She was trying so hard to not cum, to hold back and be still and submit but as her hands twisted the silk under her, she craved to touch him, to shower him in her affections and give him endless pleasure, mindless submission and service.

 

“I won’t lower myself to allow you to use my mouth in such a debased manner.” There it was, that refinement, that arrogance and pride and princely domination she adored. She craved.

“You will service me, but never, ever, will I service you. Do you understand me pet?” He was looking down at her down, his hair clinging to sweat sticky skin. He lusted for her as much as she did him, and it showed.

“Yes master.” Stephanie answered, breath shaking as he reached down, brushing a saliva slick finger into her mouth.

“You taste divine however. More’s a pity that I cannot. But I promise my pet, you will be filled. You will know your stars once this coupling is over.” She hummed, sucking the finger like it might offer up the bitter fluid she had craved so openly earlier.

“I will fuck your heat. Again and again and again until you weep from pleasure and pain. Each time I will pull from you, resist my urge, my need to breed you like a common male. I am better than any other, and when we are done, as I pump you full to the point you are flooded with my seed, you’ll know why. You wish to be claimed my pet so you will be. Over and over, you will never be free of me. After tonight, no male of any race will be able to give you what I can provide to you. You will hunger for me. You will crave me, want me, desire me, and no other cur will take you from me you understand?” Each word was a stab to her sex, a deep twist of the knife that was buried in her body demanding release. He was crass and vile and dirty and primal and basic _and she wanted it all_.

 

Edging, her mind supplied, was not a ‘typical male galran sexual activity’. Their preferred form of intercourse was all about multiple sessions. About repeated orgasms to ensure shared pleasure and had basis in their species’ form of procreation and success rates. Edging was most certainly not the norm and the fact that Lotor had all but just implicitly stated he planned to literally go against his very nature in pursuit of delayed but heightened sexual gratification was an intimate knowledge that raced up Stephanie’s spine with a feeling almost akin to pride.

 

He was exemplary, absolutely not like the rest of his kind. He surpassed them, not just in battle, in tactics, in foresight and planning and subterfuge, but even behind closed doors.

Even in bed, the man would surpass all his peers.

 

Truly, he would ruin her for all others. Lotor was not a man for rivals. Once he owned something, it was his. And oh, how did Stephanie so enjoy being his in that moment.

 

She hadn’t even noticed how he’d changed positions over her, how he now sat on his calves between her legs, eyes bearing down on her body and the rise and fall of her chest. When she came back from her mind, she stared up at him, a pause in their debauchery to admire one another.

“Perfect.” His voice was light, almost airy in it’s reverence. “My marks on your skin. Such a lovely purple. Not dark like galra, but lighter. A perfect shade for you. And these-“ He reached down, pinching one of her nipples, earning a sharp cry followed with a whimper. She was still so sore and tender from his earlier abuses.

“-so responsive. How do you human women not end up on slave markets?” He asked more himself, less her. Leaning in he closed his eyes as he bent into her neck, hands cupping her bottom and lifting her hips. There- the brush of wetness, firm silk skin hot against her inner thigh. A dip, a shift in the bed, she could feel his knees under her, angling her just right and-

Her gasp as she felt his length probe at her entrance made her eye widen, frantic as she grabbing him out of instinct. Holding his body over her as he chuckled into her ear, dark and promising.

“You’re so pliant and soft. I can’t wait to tear you apart.”

 

There was no fast rough thrust into her body, no rush from him as he shifted as to find the right position to glide into her. It was a smooth unhindered motion until the first ridge of his cock, the head and initial length widening her enough to aid in her body being able to take the rest. But ridged cocks were not something a human body was made for, and he took his time working himself into her, moaning and soothing her loud panting with tender affirmations of her good behavior, of her wet and ready body. When he slid the first ridge into her, they moaned in unison and Lotor was forced to pause as his body shuddered.

“Tempting little star, trying to milk me before I am fully buried. Not yet pet, not yet.” More and more he slid into her with an agonizing slowness, each time a ridge hitting her opening his pause was followed but a small thrust, drawing out their mutual breathy gasps and moans.

 

Then she could feel the base of him against her hips, he was inside of her, completely. Lotor was keeping his face buried into her neck, groaning out his little praises as he gently rocked in her, but Stephanie was left with nothing but holding on and trying to not scream for more.

“Master.” She found her voice and at his title, her lover hummed in question.

“It feels so good.” She kept going. “It’s better than- I love it, oh master I love it. Please-“ His hum was one now of his own pleasure. His satisfaction.

“-please master, fuck me. Please.” Amused, his humming in her ear was driving her insane. She needed more than this, she need- something else. Something more.

“Please, claim me!” She was crying in how much she wished she could express how much she wanted to be fucked raw, to be used and lost to euphoria. But her words had been enough. Her affirmation of being claimed was enough.

 

Because Lotor’s hips pulled back and slammed forward, ripping a scream from Stephanie as she found just what it was she so desperately wanted.

 

“You have no idea what you want.” He sounded angry, nigh furious as he began to fuck her. Hips pulling back, the ridges of his cock making her tremble in the change of stimulation each time.   
“You have no idea what it means to be claimed!” He pulled back, hands on her thighs to lift her higher, to deepen his angle.

“You’re mine!” He yelled, fury on his face, (he had such a beautiful face she thought, even twisted in lust and anger he was still so inhumanly beautiful and handsome).

“You’ll be mine forever you stupid-“ His hips hit her body and the bed rocked under them, she screamed in joy, tears running down her cheeks as she felt each thrust how he was bottoming out, how he was hitting that spot insider her cunt with each pass, making sure to have her spinning out of control.

“-brilliant-“ Her legs brought over his shoulders, if felt like he was bending her in half.

“-reckless-“ She watched his cock plunge in and out of her body, and her eyes dilated with the realization of his size and just how much of him was spearing her open over and over again.

“-fearless-“ The echo of the bed, of skin hitting skin was loud and she knew this was what sex should be like. Utterly depraved and carnal and filthy.

“-devious-“ He was wild, expression so angry, so hungry, so fulfilled.

“-woman!” He yelled, letting one of her legs go as he pulled out of her, the hand grabbing the base of his cock as Stephanie screamed at the loss. So close- she had been so close.

 

Her entire body was shaking, she was crying, and Lotor was laughing above her, hand holding his cock now an dark angry purple. He’d denied himself orgasm, denied them both.

 

“You think I don’t know what this is?” His other hand had left her, letting her fall back to the bed, undignified as he slicked back his wild messy hair.

“That I’d let you use my nature against me? That I would let you manipulate me with sex?” He looked down, teeth bared, eye bright and knowing.

He knew that she had intended to use his claiming to manipulate a security for herself, a way to make him reluctant to kill her. Another armor. He would have reluctance to let her die or come to harm so long as his instincts told him she was claimed and _his._

 

“You devious, insightful little **bitch**.” The sudden cruel title made her freeze. This was not what she wanted.

 

“I will claim you, but don’t you **ever** -“ His hand was at her throat, tight, squeezing with a threat, a real threat as his blue eyes stared into her own.

This was not what she wanted.

This was never about what she wanted. It would always be about his wants, his needs, his plans and his triumph.

“ ** _Ever_** -“ His grip tightened and she felt him thrust into her body, her eyes wide as she tried to scream yet nothing coming out, her voice stolen by his grip.

“think you can manipulate me again. Do you understand me?” Her eyes began to roll into her head as her air was leaving her, as her body bucked into his rough thrusts, still trying to chase a release. His hand let go of her throat and she knew her answer.

“ ** _YES!_** YES MASTER! I UNDERSTAND! DON’T STOP! GOD DON’T STOP!” She reached up, grabbing his arms to brace herself as he roared driving his cock into her hard, her body sliding up the bed by the force of his thrusts.

“YES! _MASTER! **MASTER**_ **!** ” Her screams were of fear, pleasure, and a sudden profound knowledge.

She _had_ planned this. She’d planned it all.

 

But Lotor had planned to sabotage her from the start and do just as he promised- make her serve and be loyal. To have her meet his demands. To mold her into a being of his design and to become the perfect weapon. The perfect paladin. All he wanted was her trust; he’d never given her reason not to trust him.  The words he’d told her that night as she lay limp in his lap from the extinct fruit echoed in her ears as she felt her peak rising, the heat and pressure pooling in her rising to the cusp.

 

_‘You will become my paladin Stephanie’_

And she had betrayed him.

 

Again, he pulled away, holding off his own orgasm and denying her her own. But this time her tears were not for denied release, denied pleasure and a loss of contact and passion.

They were of shame. Shame, embarrassment, and sorrow. She had tried to out maneuver him, to fight him at every turn and every level and she knew, knew this was wrong and he was manipulating her but she also knew that she had to be. She had to allow it, to trust him. He alone could keep her safe. Could keep her alive in this strange place, on a ship of a race that loathed all other life forms. That saw her as lesser.

 

“I’m sorry.” Her words were soft, pained and filled with her sudden sorrow.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please-“ Lotor’s fury was still in his eyes as he looked down at her, not yet satisfied, only concerned with how long he could use her body.

“Please forgive me.” She was crying for all the wrong reasons.

“I want- I just want-“ His movements were controlled, lost to lust he might have been, there was still control in him. Lotor was indeed, like no other galra.

 

“I know what you want my little star.” All his rage, all his lust melted away as he lifted her torso up pulling her so she could cling to him, pulled so she was seated over his legs, his cock pressing against her stomach.

“And one day, you will be free again.”

 

She was guided down as she began to weep. He thrust into slowly, deeply, each moment too much for her as she felt her body begin to give out.

“You want the one thing I cannot give.” She wept loudly, holding him as she cried, as she rocked her hips in time with his body. She cried for her dead crew. Her family on earth. Her friends. Her loss of her own life and innocence. She was a killer now, a prisoner, a glorified captive.

“I promised you stars.” She kissed him. She didn’t want to hear his promises, his soft voice soothing over her wounds and scars on her heart and months of repressed emotions boiling over.

“One day, you will be free again, and all the stars will belong to you as you dreamed.”

She didn’t want to hear his promises because she didn’t want to give herself hope, to let herself believe him. He had done this, killed her crew, taken her away, made her kill. It was all his fault. All of it so why-  
“I promise.”

 

She whimpered his name as she came, body shaking and going slack as she lost her vision of his room, his bed, of him. Everything was dark and yet behind her eyelids, she could see them. Twinkling dots in her vision. Like stars bursting to life then vanishing just as quick. His voice was deep and rich, pure and clear and passionate.

_“I promise.”_

 

And she believed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 
> 
> I love me some way too cleverly manipulative bastards.   
> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


	11. Contentment is found where it should not be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part 3 of 3 lord have mercy on this smut writers soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (´・ω・`)
> 
> One day I won't write such emotion based dialogue hell smut but NOT THIS DAY

All his passion, all his fury, and he had denied himself each time. He had broken her open and ripped the truth from her very soul, ugly and real, and had not taken her as he said he would. She wanted her freedom, her home, her life, her control but as she came down from her orgasm, her body limp and spent, her eyes wet and face tear streaked he was exceedingly gentle, compassionate even to an extent.  
He'd forced her to face the ugly truth of her desires, and he had still offered her a form of freedom as he could. He had not used it against her, only made her admit that which she wanted to ignore, to deny and think she could accept as an impossibility. His claim would indeed, be forever; his hold on her, however brief would never fade from her memory, his touch and the phantom bliss she would remember of this day would forever linger with her. A claim was more than sex, it was emotion, it was a memory and a marker.

He had claimed her when he took her from her ship.  
He had claimed her when he chose to keep her alive.  
When he made clear she was his and he had use of her.  
When he had called her his paladin.  
When he had kissed her and promised her stars.

Lotor had claimed her long before she knew the brevity of what it meant. It was more than simple galran sexual coupling, it was deeper, more nuanced and it had gone unnoticed by her because she didn’t think of what she was. Of what they were, what they would be.

Whimpering, lost, confused, afraid of her how mind and heart, Stephanie melted into Lotor’s touch as she cooed softly at her, praising her wit, her survival skills, her tactics, her willingness, and understanding, he was telling her how _good_ she was. How _perfect_ she was. He knew that one day she would hate him perhaps for this, for everything, that even now, she hated him in some part of her heart, but he knew that; he wanted her to hate a part of him. Because so long as she could hate, she could love. She could grow and thrive and flourish. She could survive this.  
She would survive him.

How long she lay under him as he kissed her, slow and deep, moaning as he languidly slid himself into her again, hips gently rocking as he let her come down from the sudden emotional high Stephanie had no idea. Minutes? Seconds? Hours? Time was meaningless as she gasped his name into the air, his body drawing her back to him, to their reality. His hands holding her still as he would pull back slowly, inch after inch leaving her before he’d glide back in, pausing to brush his pelvis to her own, a gentle bump to her clit to keep her pleasure on high even as she didn’t know it.

“Do you love me, my little star?’ He whispered, his hair sticking to them both, skin sticky with sweat. “Could you love a man like me?” It was a charged question. But she knew the answer, her real answer.  
“I want to.” She whimpered then, as he sucked in air, feeling her tighten around him, knowing he’d still not had his release, that his edging was likely bordering on somewhat painful mid-coitus now.  
“I wish I could love you. I wish I could-“ She kissed him softly, hands reaching up and gliding in soft white, pulling it back so she could look at his face. Pepper his lips and cheeks and jaw and chin and everything with kisses. She truly wished she could love him. That she could just give in, surrender her mind and will totally, utterly. But survival told her no. Sanity, reason told her down that path would lay madness. Weakness and exploitation. He would use her, true. Abuse her, perhaps. He would own her and all she did, fact.  
Loving her was never to be an option. You could not love a weapon, a tool. Not if you wanted to win a war. And Lotor would win. He would sacrifice all the pawns on the chess board to do it, but he would win, even if it took him a lifetime. 

“Good girl.” He said, capturing her mouth with his, moaning when she ran her hands down his spine. Gasping when her grip found his ass squeezing gently. He was firm muscle, and she soft flesh. Duality, they played foil and accent to one another, and as he rocked into her, she gasped his name as he tipped her over the edge once more.

He pulled back, hand gripping his base, and she moaned breathy as she saw him in a renewed light.

Lavender skin glistening with sweat, soft white hair clinging to his face and frame wild and unkempt. Muscles rippling with his movement and pulsing with his racing heart. His eyes, oh so expressive, oh so different, so eerily human and beautiful, glossy with pleasure and adore. Not for her but for what was between them. A understanding. A match of weapon and wielder, a king and knight, dominant and submissive, master and slave.  
A woman and a man.

She was privy to this side of him, to this duality, this partnership for that was what it would be. Slave is her position by his people. Partner, by his choice. Ally, by her survival. This was theirs, and no other.  
This was Lotor, her Lotor, and she smiled up at him, feeling a sense of peace, even in the depths of her sorrows over all she had lost.

“Claim me Lotor.” She reached up for him, beseeching, knowing now what it was she asked for.  
“Claim your paladin.” His eyes held hers as he bend over her again. His kiss was long and deep, and she tasted her tears in his mouth, salty and wet. He’d kissed them away for her. He would care for her, if only because he had to.

Her body rolled over so she was on her stomach, his hands running down her backside with blunt nails, making her muscles twitch.  
Lotor would tend to her, because she meant something to him. More than just an investment.  
His voice was rough as he pulled her hips up, guided her to rest on her forearms rather than try to lift her entire body upright.  
“Mine.” He growled, so base, so male- and she moaned for him. For the Lotor than was not a prince, not a commander, not her owner, but her master, her lover.  
He whispered against her shoulder his seed would go deeper like this, she’d take him better at that angle.  
Lotor would keep her because she would not betray him again.

His thrust was fast and deep, her body well stretched, well used. She still screamed his name as he did so, her sense over stimulated, her channel abused with their many sessions so far.  
Lotor knew now she would not betray him, not until they both knew it was time for her to be let go and her to be free.

He was over her body, hips pistoning in and out of her roughly. She was calling his name, chanting it, begging him to not stop, to take her, claim her, fuck her. Stephanie welcomed him, and begged for more. More rough, more pain, more pleasure and passion. She reached back, her nails digging into his thigh to encourage his rough handling of her, to spur him further to their act, the final moment that he’d been building towards this entire time. To her becoming his and hew knowing what that would mean entirely.

There was a sharp crack in the air and Stephanie felt the bed sag a bit to the right, laughter tumbling out with the realization they had literally broken his bed with their actions, her laugh ending when he pulled her hips up, Lotor’s cock hitting her g-spot before pulling back sharply.  
She called out for him again as the headboard hit the wall, as pillows were forced in her arms and she fought to maintain her sense of mind as he kept fucking her, her body desperate for his abuse, his drawing yet another orgasm from her almost too much. It was almost painful now how good it felt to be used this way, to be abused and fucked so hard. When she had enough sense to turn her head so she could breathe blue eyes that swam in moonlight found blue that swam in sunlight. 

He was looking at her in a way that made her body tighten, that made her cunt squeeze down on him hard, needing him. Wanting him. Craving him-  
His name was cast to the heavens in a prayer, as he threw his head back and roared her name. 

The effect was sudden, a heated rush of cum filling her up and making her body spasm, her muscles desperately working to milk the thick cock inside her for each precious drop of his seed, his jizzism, his cum. Primal, carnal, base, he kept pumping in and out of her, hips shaking as he chanted her name over and over, head falling back as he rode out his first release. Deep inside her, aimed at her core, cock nestled snugly in tight embrace as he sprayed her down, aiming for her cervix.  
And her abused, tired body, took him. All of him. Drop by drop she felt his essence filling her up like a bottle to the point of being full, to the point when it was overflowing and his own cock pushed some of it out, letting it run down her thighs and no doubt further ruining the silk sheets under them both.

Finally, when she felt his grip slacken, his hips slowed their shallow thrusts and he slipped out, she moaned his name as if he were her lover in more than just physical means.  
“Don’t-“ She whimpered, voice horse, dry.  
“Inside, need it, want it inside.” She was dizzy with exhaustion, with her mind racing to keep up with him, her body being so thoroughly brought through the most intense sexual acts she’d ever participated in.  
“Oh Stephanie, my Stephanie.” His voice was so full of wonder, of awe. What did he see? A woman used and spent? His paladin, claimed? A lover, sated?  
“Forgive me. One day, forgive me for this.” It was a whisper from him, she almost missed it.  
She felt him move, slow and languid, her eyes fluttering shut as she fought to remain awake. His warmth lost she moaned at the air cooling the fluid on her thighs. Eyes closed, in the dark she listened to his movement, his walk across the room, water running, drawers opening, closing.  
“Shh.” He noised at her, something pushing at her entrance. She whined, sore and tired, she didn’t think could take him again. But whatever it was slipped inside her, cool and soothing.  
“Shh.” He cooed again at her. Letting her adjust to the object he'd set inside of her between her thighs.

“Lay down my darling, my star. Yes, that’s it. Gently now, gentle-“ His hands helped her, holding her up with a strength she didn’t have, stopping her from falling twisted and painfully on a bed that she knew was soft yet would not yield for her. New pet names, loving almost, affectionate yes. She wanted to read into it, to understand him, to try and parse why suddenly he would be so endearing towards her.  
“You did so well. So perfectly. Are you thirsty?” She had no words, so she hummed, and Stephanie felt him shift on the bed, lifting her up so she was upright, the heat of his body against her own.  
A small press of glass to her lips, she followed the sounds, his voice.  
“Little sips my gem, just like that. Yes, little sips.” He was tilting a glass of liquid for her. The taste of cucumber cooling her throat, soothing the ache and pain.  
“Stephanie, my Stephanie.” His hands pulled the glass away after a while and a hand began to comb through her hair, catching on a few tangles before working free.

“You are claimed my paladin. You are mine now.” He spoke with such a gentle affection, a genuine adoration towards her, she wondered if this was a dream. She shivered as wet cloth touched her thighs and he tutted at her.  
“Ah, ah, be still my star, be still. You have done so much today. You’ve again, gone beyond all my expectations.” He cleaned her thighs, her stomach, her skin. The cool cloth wet and refreshing. In her mind, she began to realize what this was, what he was doing and she wished she could thank him for it.  
“Can you speak my darling? Do you know where you are?” She hummed before she tried to answer him, a small burn at her vocal chords. It felt good, even as it was also pain.  
“With you. Your room.” Blind, she reached up to where his face was. His hand found her own and he kissed her palm before pulling her hand to his cheek.  
“And your name my gem?” She started breathing slower, heart no longer a dull thunder in her ears.  
“Stephanie.”  
“Yes, good girl, my Stephanie. My star, my perfect little paladin.”  
“Lotor-“ He rubbing his face into her hand, reply a soothing hum she felt against her skin.  
“I- can I sleep here for a while?”

In her hand, she felt his lips move into a smile.  
“Of course my darling one, rest. You earned it. I am so happy Stephanie. You have made me so happy.” She let her hand drop, relaxing into his embrace, smiling as she curled into his warmth. Letting his soft, gentle, kind tones run over mind and body.  
“Lotor?” She managed, voice a whisper.  
“Yes?” He sounded so sure of himself, not worn out like she felt. Stephanie breathed in the scent of him. It was good.  
“Are you mine? Truly?” She knew he was not but-  
“I will not deny you my sweet Paladin.” He kissed the top of her head as she began to drift.  
“I will be yours. Your Lotor.” He sounded like something else. Something she didn’t know how to name.

“Mine.” She said as she drifted to sleep in his arms, knowing it was not true, thankful he would allow her a small fantasy to sooth her guilt.

In her dreams she could still hear his voice, wishing what she heard was real, that it could be real, if maybe in another life. A lover’s voice, filled with emotion and profound feeling for her and her alone.

_“Yours.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what is aftercare  
> we just don't know  
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	12. Joy happens before it is expected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more smut  
> (◡‿◡✿)

The next morning, (was it morning? She didn’t see a clock and her watch was currently in it’s place in the bedside drawer in her room), Stephanie moaned with a knowing tenderness across her body. Along with an array of sensation.  
The first sensation was the dull ache that ran deep in her muscles, one she knew from a few rare sexual encounters that had been slightly satisfactory in her past. That particular morning her dull ache was radiating all over, which was new, but not unwelcome.  
The second sensation was the low rumbling breathing at her back accompanied with the heat of bare skin plastered to her own. That, she knew after a split second of wonder, would likely be her Master, also now lover, Lotor. His breaths were deep and each exhale cause a gentle sort of rumble in his lower chest that went upwards. It was odd, but also pleasing as it started at the base of her spine than ran up. Not to mention his face was pressed into her neck, and his legs so perfectly tangled up with her own. She had to admit, she missed waking up with a bed mate, to that feeling of being embraced and secure. Granted, their entire relationship and power dynamic had shifted, but, it should have been expected. She did, if semi unwittingly, play right into his hand.  
The third and most… odd sensation came from the tightness between her thighs. She vague remembered him cleaning her off with a cloth to aid in a general sense of clean, even though she’d passed out in the defiled silk of his bed, but something was lodged inside of her sex, and it was certainly not organic, (unless Lotor’s dick somehow could turn into actual metal). Not to mention, he was too much at an angle to properly be penetrating her.  
This meant that to alleviate the third and least pleasing sensation, Stephanie would need to move.

Thus, a problem. Lotor’s arm had wrapped under her breasts, and was holding onto her arm. If she moved, she might wake him. She didn’t know what to expect, but from what she recalled of galran sex practices and claiming, it was not uncommon for partners to resume their coupling the next day to establish a firm bond between them. And while Lotor had most certainly claimed her, Stephanie was uncertain if her body could even handle another night. She knew she was sore and tender like a blushing ex-virgin in all those smutty novels she read in high school, but what those books didn’t talk about was the need to use the bathroom or sex toys left inside of you for god only knew why.

Not to mention possibly very horny space princes determined to establish themselves as your sexual partner and owner. 

So while she didn’t want to wake Lotor and deal with the ‘I need to pee, because that happens after sex and sleep’ talk, nor, did she want to wake him and have to face a possibly very easily infuriated galran male who’s newly claimed lover was not responsive to their attentions, (which was much like many a fragile male ego on earth she figured).

Thankfully, she didn’t have to make a decision on how to act because while she had been thinking, Lotor had already been waking. It was only when Stephanie realized that his deep rumbling sleep against her back had ended that her master and lover was now humming into her neck. The galran equivalent of a purr.

“Did you rest well my paladin?” She wanted to turn and slap the smug tone from him. He knew damn well she had. What woman wouldn’t’ve with the pure exhaustion from the sex marathon he’d spent with her. Not to mention the absolute emotional roller coaster that had come unexpectedly with it.  
“Yes but-“ She nudged the arm draped over her, vaguely reaching in between her legs to dislodge whatever he’d put there, (she had a guess to what it was).

“Let me. If you try to remove it too quickly you might harm yourself.” He moved with a languid slowness, slipping from her back to move under the covers, out from her slight. His hands snaking over her, Stephanie couldn’t help her’s body’s response, shivering at his hands and how she ached when he slowly had her lay on her back, legs spreading over for him.

She didn’t think it was smart, given how intense the previous night had been but when his fingers found her clit? “So warm and red. If it hurts, speak up Stephanie, I do not want to cause you any more discomfort than necessary.” Lotor was true to his word- no oral, (she wished he had, heavens above she wished that’s what he’d been planning), but the man worked her to a gentle slow arousal, enough so that her body produced enough lubrication so the object that had filled her was slowly worked free, (also realizing how her body throbbed, having grown obscenely accustomed to the phallic intrusion).

When Lotor crawled back up, she felt a very sudden, very heated rush to both her face and her core as he came back into view, licking at the glossy black plug that had previously been used to keep his cum inside her while she slept. 

“As much as I would enjoy ravishing you right this moment, you are undoubtedly sore from our prior joining. I will content myself with this while you go bathe.” He eyed her with an air of amusement as Stephanie felt the heat in her face match her gaping as the blatantly lewd display he was making as his tongue ran up and down the slick coated surface of the plug.

“Bathe?" Her voice was raw and perhaps the most strained part of her.  
“Yes. I know you know how a tub works Stephanie. You’re hardly a dim woman. I- oh.” A genuine look of concern edged with (possible) guilt came over his face.  
“Can you walk?” It was the most arrogant thing he could ask, (even if it was laced with a mild genuine concern for her wellbeing), but as she moved her legs, she winced.  
“Yes-“ Her blush kept deepening, and she felt it on her neck now, warmth suffusing her skin, “Master.” She finished, his title leaving her with a soft whisper.

His groan of masculine pleasure made her loath just how easily the man on the bed triggered her responses. She wished she’d never let him figure out her sexual preferences, her perversions.  
“Pet, you are a delight. Go. Let me see that lovely figure saunter to the bathroom. I want to see all the marks I left when I claimed your soft, plump little body earlier.”  
Damn him and his voice spewing such filth. She liked it far too much for her own good.

Stephanie managed to make it to the bathroom just fine, and just to satisfy Lotor, she threw him her best sultry glance over her shoulder at him.  
Just in time to see him give the vaginal plug a long lick followed by a smirk that the devil himself might wear.

Clsoing the door, she took stock of his private bathroom. The bathroom was much like his own room, somewhat spacious, but fairly barren of personal items, save for bottles here and there. She did however, see the aftermath of last night scramble to find the vial of numbing liquid she’d drunk so she could perform on his-  
Her body betrayed her, cunt throbbing at the memory of how she’d practically fucked her own face on his cock, shoving him so deep they both felt him in her throat. The worst thing was she wanted to do it again. This time, holding him there as she would play with his sac, or better, she could work just his head and the rest with her hands so when he’d come, he’d spray her face down with his essence and mark her skin with his scent and-  
“Goddamn it, get it together.” She muttered to herself, setting the water to fill the tub while she relieved herself.

Once the tub was full and she'd located a cloth and soap, she allowed herself a chance to relax as she stepped in. The hot water immediately soothed the full body ache she felt, and the moan Stephanie let our must have particularly loud because what came next made her tense again with a rush of pure anticipatory want.  
“Pet, remember, your pleasure is mine to give. Or do you need me to tend to you?” Lotor yelled from outside the door. She groaned into her hands, the warm water now seeming like a bad idea. She wanted to relax but how did you relax when half of you was uncertain where to go; Stephanie wished there was some sort of precedent for this, a prisoner turned slave turned lover turned favored future warrior. That half of her wanted to go to him and ask to be allowed to simply work and treat this as if it never occurred. The other half of her wanted to just go back to the bed of the man who’d just given her the most amazing sex she had ever experienced in her life despite all of the above. So what did one do?

The answer was stupid but it was also, she justified, entirely practical.  
“I need you master.” She said. Not loud enough sadly, as he called for her to repeat herself.  
“Master, I need you.” She tried to sound like she was begging, and not just blatantly wanting another round of sex because even against a race that had hardwired sex drives steeped in power dynamics, apparently human women could be even more insatiable than space princes who practiced edging. 

Lotor’s self-satisfied grin in the bathroom doorway made her almost tell him off but, he was also shamelessly erect and-  
“You didn’t get to really admire it earlier, did you?” She’d been staring. Fucking hell, he must have thought her an idiot.  
“I-no master it’s quite-“ She let a shaking exhale leave her as she took her time to examine his member from afar.

When taken in full view of his body, it seemed.. just a little bit more alien than the rest of him. A bit more galra typical with it’s ridges and deep purple tint. Not to mention it’s girth and length. It bordered on too large for the rest of him proportionally, but it was also fully erect, and she suspected he was a ‘grower not a shower’. Stephanie just figured it was different, sort of like those specialty dildos one could buy online on earth.

But when she realized she had finished her appraisal of his cock, she had begun to drink in the sight of him properly. The way he held himself against the door frame. Confident and arrogant but not without merit. The sharp jawline and feature of his face, the broad set of his shoulders matched with the thick mass of muscle. A smattering of faint scars on his lavender skin, his long legs and the hip bones that dipped into that perfect ‘V’. The faint chest hair she could now make out along with the thatch of white above his groin. 

“-it’s perfect.” She said, eyes demurely reaching his as she sank into the tub.  
“I just- It’s ah-“ She was bashful. How the fuck did she now have to feel embarrassed of all things? Her inner turmoil was raging fiercely, demanding she both ask to be given a soothing cuddle and go their separate ways, the other half wanting him to just take her and fuck her wildly while she submit to anything he’d give her.  
Lotor, either sensing her unease, or just growing impatient, stepped in quickly, narrowing the distance between them before he was looming over her and the tub.  
“Humans-“ he began, stepping into the tub, hot water sloshing with his displacement and ignoring her strangled cry of surprise. It was not an overly large tub, but, it was technically big enough.  
“-Are a very modest species in general. I took some time to read and many of your cultures find sex and nudity to be exceptionally taboo. Is that why even after earlier, you shy from me in this way?” His voice was not so much hurt or curious she noted but rather clinical, factual.  
“Yes.” Her monosyllable answer must have been displeasing as his eyes narrowed at her and she slunk into the tub, as if the water might hide the fresh flush of shame and embarrassment.  
His glare ended, and the sigh he let escape was one of weariness. It made something in her chest ache.  
“Galra are not a liberal species as you know, but in this, we are honest about our natures. I claimed you Stephanie. I have marked your body with signs of our coupling and my scent, or rather the scent of our sex will be noticed. The only shame you should feel is that you did not mark me as deeply. None of my officers should make you feel ashamed of this. Many expected this outcome, as you should well know. But, before they did not know your ferocity," he said, both knowing he was referring to her brutal murder of Balrung, "But now, you have earned this place, by your merits and not by simplely my lust to sample an exotic woman's warmth.” She looked up at him, that feeling in her chest tightening.

He was looking her over, determined to have her understand his words, to understand him. He was trying to protect her, assure her, and she found it almost endearing how he thought a lifetime of being raised in a western earth society could be overwritten by a single post-coitus bathtub talk.  
“Now, stop this-“ he motioned to how she’s moved from his body to allow him room in the tub, “-shyness. I fucked you thoroughly, and there isn’t an inch of you I have not found displeasing to me yet.” His face twisted to a perverse smile.  
“Even if I have yet to live up to your cliché of anal probing.” Stephanie let out a whine of pure shame in the fact of all things he’d recall that. It was the most un-sexy thing he could have said and he did. But, at her shame, he laughed, amused, and reached out to pull her body to his with a undignified squeal.  
“Stop fussing my star, I wish for us to bathe while a maid cleans the bedding. Then, we’ll enjoy a light meal and resume our session- if that is amenable to you?” 

Two things clicked at once. One, Lotor had a goddamn maid cleaning the sheets that were covered in evidence of their sexual escapades, (which to her meant everyone and their mother would know just exactly what had occurred between them with no room for discussion or dismissal). Two, he was asking her if she wished to continue having sex with him. She realized this was a thing she had once more, just assumed of him based from his being galra. That she half expected him to demand it. Blue eyes looked up into his face, and she must have been very easy to read, as while he began to run fingers through her messy bed head, he smiled again towards her, gently like a lover might.  
“We both know a proper claiming lasts over a longer period of time with several sessions, but our differing biology only will allow us so much. I will never force you to my bed Stephanie.” There was a firmness there, a resolute promise of his will and his word.  
“I am not a savage, and the idea of an unwilling partner is… abhorrent to me.” He frowned, and without thinking, she moved up to kiss his chin. A submissive gesture, done often to assure a lover or help alleviate their stress and ground them.  
“Sorry, I know you wouldn’t.” She said, kissing along his jaw. More acts of submission, she wanted in that moment to assure him. He had her trust, despite knowing she should not, in this, he had her trust.

“Tie me up, hold me down, ravage me until I scream,” she moved into the space between his legs, setting there as she ran her hands over his warm skin, wanting to assure him that no, she trusted him when it came to the sexual aspect of their relationship.  
“Fill my body with your cum, mark me up with your hands and teeth, make me scream until I can’t talk-“ Her words were having a delightful effect on his body. His eyes were dilating and she could feel him swell against her skin under the water. He had the upper hand so often, she was going to try her best to match him, or at least, keep him aware that she enjoyed what had occurred and would occur doubtlessly again.  
“-own me, claim me, fuck me until all I can do is scream your name,” His focus was on her as Stephanie smiled at him, her eyes betraying a sexual playfulness while her hand found the base of his shaft, a small squeeze drawing a deep growl from Lotor.  
“You can do all of those things to me, and I will trust you every-“ he punctuated her words with kitten licks on his neck, “single,” his breath sucked in, she felt his hands grab hold of her hips, “time.” His eyes were alight with lust and unbridled mirth at her sudden salacious admission.  
_“Master_.” 

He snapped from all veiled control, pulling her up and into his lap as his mouth crashed down on her lips, demanding and tongue seeking her own out as they moaned in unison. Angry hot passion, she yielded to him (and his sudden groping of her rear).  
“Such vulgarity.” He hissed at her, voice a touch deeper than casual now. “I knew humans could be crude but that my gem, that was absolutely vile.” Yet he hardly sounded displeased with her.  
“And here I thought you were above such things, at least somewhat of an innocent.” She laughed at the idea, and kissed his chin before reaching behind his head for the soap.  
“Would you really prefer a virgin? I- this is new. This… claim between us.” She blushed again, realizing that she really had been rather crude. “But I’m not innocent.” He grinned like a wolf, grabbing a nearby washcloth and offering it to the soap she held.  
“No my crass little paladin,” he was moving in a hurry, lathering the cloth and beginning to run it over her body, “I find I rather like you like this. But-“ He looked at her, all heat, all command in his voice, “-only for me.”

She laughed for him, before cooing softly at his hurried bathing of her body. His hands running over her and cleansing the previous day’s sweat from their skin.  
“Of course master. But if I can ask?” He paused in his ministration, blue eyes catching her own.

“Would you mind if I asked you to fuck me right now? I think the meal can wait a while.” Lotor had already been hard, but the twitch of him against her body made her core pulse with need. He only looked at her with a darkened gaze.  
“Ask for it, Stephanie.”

She looked at him in the eyes, blue to blue, she felt their intensity and relished in how empowered she felt, knowing this man, this prince, this future emperor was utterly so lusting for her.  
“ _Fuck me Lotor._ ”

Stephanie would later think on how she’d never had a man fuck her in a tub before. But when she saw how he looked, reclining on the tub’s edge, skin flushed with heat from the bathwater and the orgasm she’d begged him for written across her lover’s blissed out face, bathing sex was more than worth asking for.  
No wonder all those smutty novels of her youth had a shower scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly want to move the plot but well  
> (ʘ‿ʘ✿)  
> They refuse to stop fucking


	13. Commonality is present within difference

“OH FUCK- MORE!”  
Somehow, she really did not mind screaming for him anymore. Lotor’s hips worked her at an unrelenting pace, driving his cock right over her g-spot with each thrust, and the raised ridges of his alien cock gliding in and out of her folds were better than any damnable dildo that she bet she would have been able to find had she lived on earth. Stephanie was acceptant of their mutual newly formed relationship, as unconventional as it was. There was no true earth equivalent but if she had to try and label what she was, ‘Lover’ and ‘Commander’ were one in the same however, emotion was secondary in both bedroom and in duty. That was just the galran way.

As while she grabbed weakly at his pillows hips ground hard against her own. She shrieked with pleasure at the rough stimulation. One leg thrown over his shoulder, she was allowed a more relaxed position as Lotor’s stamina was the greater of theirs, and, his instinct was still to ensure she got pregnant. Now at their fourth round of ‘couplings’, she knew he was tiring and his drive to claim her repeatedly was lessening. That however, did not mean that his lust was anywhere near fully sated. After he’d fucked her against the door of his bathroom, he’d given her an estimate of ‘four to six’ couplings total. The first had just been as intense as it was because ‘I am very selfish and the sight of you crying for my cock and release was just too good for me to pass up.’

Now on the forth coupling, (with the brief break after the third to eat and apply a soothing gel on her rather abused sex), Stephanie was welcoming the enthusiasm that Lotor was sharing with her over their mutual pleasure. Not to mention, she was finding she rather liked it how after each time he would coo and praise her for her body’s ability to receive his cum. According to him, (and the damnably specific druidic knowledge) most galran females did not have bodies that allowed a large deposit of sperm, and would naturally try to expel it. 

Just why he’d set the plug in her after their first joining when she’d begged for it to remain and why he had such an object in the first place. However, at this point, no plug would be needed with how much sperm his body was producing and how much she was able to retain provided her hips were kept up.  
He had however, taken his sadistic time after their round in the tub fingering her and dragging a fair amount out of her just to enjoy the sight of her trembling from his touch and the sight of his cum running down her thighs.

As Stephanie felt his hips shake and drive into her with a greater force, she secretly hoped this time he might pull out the second after she reached her release only for him to ejaculate over her body. It would have been atypical of his race, but, the man practiced edging, what was a cumshot or two? (Past Stephanie would have been mortified at the debauched thoughts that were cascading in her head now. Present Stephanie was just focused on how absolutely good it felt to let go and embrace her newfound position, traitor to humanity or not).

“Master! Fuck me! Its so good- So much- OH MASTER!” He leaned over her, leg still hanging off his shoulder, his hips stilling as she felt him bottom out, the base of him pushed right against her ass and his pelvis hitting her hard enough she could feel his bones and weight.  
“You want it Pet?” His voice was low and strained, absolutely bestial as he spoke and it made her cunt squeeze down on him tighter.  
“Tell your master how you want it. How do you want to get my cock you filthy, needy, demanding little paladin?” One hand holding him up, the other grabbed her hair, pulling enough so she was looking right at him, both of them relishing the looks of lust on each other’s face.

Stephanie lost it when he pulled her hair and called her pet.  
“Make me cum! Oh God, make me cum and then spray me down with yours! Fuck, oh FUCK!” She yelled, hips thrusting up, desperate and at the edge of her pending orgasm.  
“I want your hot galran cum on my tits!”

That had been his trigger, as he began thrusting raggedly into her, roaring out various epithets, all positive while he roughly adjusted her so both legs were hooked over his shoulders, and the former space explorer felt infinitely grateful she used to take yoga classes. The angle was deep and sharp and after a few thrusts she was screaming in a babble of his name and title, her sex throbbing and squeezing and pulling on his cock for his seed.  
He chased her orgasm with his own, pulling out and allowing gravity to work in his favor. His cock might have been erect, but it was at such a perfect angle that the sticky substance went directly down onto her stomach and breasts. And more debauched and strangely pleasingly enough, on her face as well.

Both of them relaxed almost immediately after, bodies sagging limply as they trembled in mild afterglow. Lotor moved first, his hand reaching to milk out a few last drops of cum that he gently nudged into her puffy vaginal lips, moaning softly as he did so. As for Stephanie, she sighed, eyes closing and running her hands over her now cum covered skin, coating her chest with the sticky fluid.

So much for their bath earlier.

As with the first time, Lotor recovered far faster, taking care as he moved her limbs to not strain her further, and went to gather a cloth to clean her and sooth the aches she might have.  
He was nothing if not an attentive and tender lover.

“I-“ She began, now relaxing on the bed, her hand resting on his chest as she lay half on him, draped over his torso and enjoying the respite that came between their couplings.  
“I didn’t think you’d actually do it.” He hummed, blue eyes looking down at her sparkling in amusement and curiosity, waiting for her to elaborate.  
“Pull out and cum on me like that.” Her face flushed hot and she broke his gaze, that sudden bashfulness of her own darker perversions difficult to dismiss even now. Still, he allowed it, chuckling slightly before he drank his own water.  
“It is preferable if I had seeded you as intended but, covering you in the scent of sex and me is also rather-“ He growled, pleased with himself, (and her?), “-Satisfactory.”  
She didn’t have the courage to look back up at him while she played with the fine white hairs on his chest.  
“We’ll need another bath after all this.” Stephanie blushed with his reply to her statement.  
“And remove the evidence of my pleasure on your skin? Hardly. Besides, we removed most of it with the cloth. I want the rest to linger. Make all the guards in those halls smell how perfectly you wear me.” She pushed into his chest lightly in her embarrassment in the knowledge of yes, that was exactly a galran male thing to do; as well as trying to quell her the uncertainty in how she still felt about the more ‘public’ aspects of having Lotor as both her commander, owner, and lover.

“You are truly perverse.” She mumbled, trying to mask the flush of lingering arousal at his words and her shame in enjoying as deeply as she did.  
“Yet you take me and my cock so well Stephanie. One might argue that your species were bred for physical enjoyment of this nature. A complimentary species to a galran.” She yelped as his wandering hand slapped her bottom lightly.  
“Humans-“ She looked up at him, seeing his smug sly grin. He was a right bastard and he knew it.  
“Humans evolved just like any other species. Our practices and compatibility vary person to person.”  
“In other words my paladin, you are a perfect match for me. Only more evidence I was correct in choosing you for my plans.” He hooked a finger under her jaw, guiding her face back up to his.

“Lotor-“ She tried, she rationalized, she really did. But-  
Lotor was an insatiable alien space prince with a very focused active sex drive and a very convincing dominant. He also was a good kisser.

The fifth time they had sex, he took his time heaping praises on her about how her smaller human body was so plaint and welcoming of his needs.  
The sixth time was all rushed gasps and low loud moans against his bedroom door, whispers of how no doubt the guards down the hall could hear every sound she made, (and he did so enjoy drawing out a few perfectly timed shrieks of delight and screams of his name). 

The seventh, (and thankfully final time), they had sex, he had taken her slowly and leisurely on the couch, thrusting up into her as she lay sprawled over him, holding him tight as he spilled into her with a deep rumbling purr. 

As the lust faded, as her tenderness grew and soreness rose, she felt him slip out, and-  
“Perhaps-“ He began, “-it is time we rest. You have endured-“ Another pause, he drew an arm over his face, breathing deep, fighting off his fatigued state.  
“Seven sessions in this claiming? My, and here I thought I would be satisfied with perhaps five or six at best.” Blue eyes delighted at the sight of her looking up at him in flush bliss.  
“Once more-“  
She cut him off. “I exceeded your-Oh!“ His hands went to her ass, slowly lifting her torso up as he moved to carry them back to his bed.  
“Exceeded your expectations?’ She mused, using his own turn of phrase.  
“Exactly my star.” He seemed strangely relaxed in these sparse moments, like this was the man who he might had he not also been the prince of the galra empire. But, Stephanie also knew that her thoughts were human, and human and galra while compatible, shared very different views on sentiment and meanings.

As he did as he’d done before, cleaning her and himself with a damp cloth, offering water and small bites of food, she thought on the day’s events, (mostly sex, sprinkled in with reflections on their relationship). Lotor had not given her pet names until after the first round of sex, and after, his positive affirmations of her had basically skyrocketed. Druidic knowledge said this was semi-typical of a claiming couple, to share affections during the couplings, and shortly thereafter, but she was human. Pet names were intimate on a social level. An deeper emotional one.

Uncertain she waited until he joined her under the sheets and he’d gathered her to his side to bother inquiring.  
“Is there a reason to the names? Up until now I was your pet, paladin, slave. But after we-“ Her hesitancy to admit to the act drew a tired sigh from him.  
“We fucked Stephanie. Please stop acting so shy of what we both enjoyed.”  
“Yes well.” She cleared her throat. “You stopped calling me slave, calling me your chosen, your gem, your star, your explorer-“ Her hands began their usual motions. Fingers tracing circles and swirls in his chest, fingers playing with fine hairs and admiring how soft they were rather than wiry like a human man’s hair might be.  
“-You called me your dearest and your sweet. These terms they- They’re usually reserved for lovers who _are_ in love.” She looked up, expecting him to perhaps be alarmed, instead she was met with a mix of curiosity and evaluation in his face.  
“It’s not that I mind them, rather I enjoy them, even though I know you and I don't feel that way for each other. But, they still hold an emotional charge for me, for a human in general. You also did not call me things like... slut and whore. I am glad for that.”  
“I asked if you were and you said you were not. I will respect your dislike of those terms.” He said it factually, as if a single moment in the heat of sex it was the most rational thing in the world.

It clicked and she groaned out loud, pushing her head into his chest as she felt stupid all of the sudden.  
“Oh god, I am an idiot.”  
“ _No_ ,” He said suddenly admonishing, “ you are human, as so often you seem to need to remind yourself. I am of galran decent. Our views and thoughts on sex and it’s many various aspects differ. I call you endearments because it pleases you, stimulates us both, and each one is a way I might remind you that I have claimed you. I did not know they carried the emotional weight for you.” He began that dreadfully distracting combing of her hair with his fingers.  
“I will refrain from using them as liberally as I would be you a galran. If it soothes your mind, know that it is only when we are alone that I would call you my dearest or such as my gem. You had few issues with me addressing you as pet, paladin, and chosen correct?” She nodded against his bare chest.  
“What of explorer? Star?”  
“Mid-tier. Call me those if you want to let me know you desire me intimately at such a moment.” She answered, trying to sound as helpful as possible. This was just as untested ground for him as it was for her. And she had the benefit of druidic knowledge no less. He didn’t have such an advantage on her, (at least she assumed not). 

“That is fair. For now, I will do my best to honor your terms of endearment usage. Most are simply factual after all, the rest… are more claim based. I will use them only when required. Does that sound agreeable?” She knew what he meant. There would be times where he might have to call her an intimate endearment to passively display her position and role in her service to him.  
“Yeah.”  
“ _Yeah_ she says. So unrefined. We must work on your vocabulary Stephanie.”  
She grunted, wrapping herself tighter against him.

“Tomorrow morning I’ll have you visit Alren for a check up, ensure we did not over tax you or harm you unintentionally. After that, your studies and coding. Training can resume once Alren approves it.” He was talking too much, thinking to hard. Fatigue was hitting Stephanie hard now, and she wanted this to be the part where they cuddled and just enjoyed each other’s touch before falling asleep.

“Lotor?”  
“Hrm?”  
“Please shut up and just rest with me.”  
He laughed, and after, remained blissfully silent, stroking her head until finally, Stephanie drifted to a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyy a final smut scene and now we're back on track to plot


	14. Conflict is not solved with voice

The following days after she and Lotor had relations were blessedly, void of any real tangible changes. The only one who’d reacted oddly to the whole situation was Alren, her ‘designated’ doctor. Apparently, he hadn’t expected Lotor to be in his words ‘as aggressive and through with his claim’ as he had been. Which was perhaps a polite way of saying that she was covered in marks of their various actions. He had even gone so far as to give her a special shampoo and soap that would not remove too many of the scent markers Lotor had left her with, (as had they faded, Alren doubted her body would be as accommodating by another day spent in the prince’s bedroom for over 24hrs). Stephanie was inclined to agree as the soreness that accompanied her for the week after was just what the prince had promised. A sweet, painful agony that served to remind her of just exactly they had done behind closed doors. 

His generals had not much to say on the matter, and Stephanie had nearly choked on her own tongue when Lotor flat out told them that word for word, ‘Stephanie has been claimed as of yesterday by myself, I trust there are no objections to this?’ Acxa as looked at her, raised an eyebrow and said that she was surprised it took him that long to act. Ezor had grinned and asked how it was, (Lotor and smirked, she had blushed). Zethrid had remarked on how well Lotor had marked her, and how she was looking forward to watching challengers come to want to try and claim Stephanie for themselves, (the large woman had been smiling, almost looking proud as she spotted the mark Stephanie had left on Lotor, who she was utterly positive had brushed back his hair at that exact moment to show off). Narti had just turned and given her a thumbs up.

Other than that single instance, none had really mentioned it, and nothing had changed, (well, Ezor did come by her room later that day wanting ‘the juicy details’. Stephanie had kept most things to herself, but did entertain the other woman a fair deal. Apparently, size and kink talk was always thing, no matter what race or species you were). All in all, Stephanie found that it was not so bad now, being aware of her place in a more open and stable fashion. It eased her mind, helped lessen the stress of her fears that he might harm her, force her or use it as a means of coercion. She also had to admit, he kept his promises very well and thoroughly, her entire wardrobe devoid of the standard whites and replaced with soft lace that left very little to the imagination yet still supported her girls.

She was hard pressed to admit that she was impressed with how the lace didn’t itch her skin either.

Her schedule remained the same for the next several weeks, (she asked for a small datapad a few days after her and Lotor’s day in. It was a blessing with keeping track of time not to mention being able to jolt down notes on the fly). Wake, eat, train, bathe, snack and work on coding or building one of the many projects on the ship, eat dinner with Lotor and the generals, and then report to Lotor of her progress. It was monotonous, but it was regular, and it gave her a sense of purpose, and a sense of pride. She was making strides, developing things, working being useful.

Then at the four-month mark of her time as the chosen Paladin, she got the news. There was to be a change in her schedule. Her coding, the firewalls, the programs, the translations, all was to be put on indefinite hold. She was going to start more in-depth hand to hand combat and piloting immediately. The reason?

_Thayserix._

Stephanie was initially, enraged on several parts. One, was that her work was being cut off and she was not a woman to just leave something uncompleted. Two, they had engaged the Paladins of Voltron and failed to inform her, (she actually had yelled at Acxa about that one, as it was by her order to ‘leave the coder to her numbers’). Thirdly-

“You absolute moron! Did you have any idea what you could have cost us? Cost me?”   
Lotor had chosen to personally engage the Lions, and while she trusted his skills, he had ultimately gambled with his life on a hunch, and ergo, gambled with her own life.  
“I am warning you Stephanie, your tone is not appreciated right now. And I am not enjoying your-“  
“No!” She snarled at him, daring him to talk her down from this. Galran logic or not, he was a masterful tactician and skilled man of many talents, but the fact that he had ultimately shut her out from the very thing she was supposed to defeat and risked both their lives on something a stupid as ascertaining just how dysfunction the paladins of Voltron were. She would know. Not even a minute of watching the footage and she recognized the blatantly clear pattern breaks of what were otherwise typical galaxy garrison formations. 

“Not on this Lotor. With all due respect SIR,” She was feeling every inch a cat, hissing and spitting at him as his features grew increasingly dark.  
“You should have summoned me. Let me know what was going on. I could have told you outright, one of those pilots _had no training at the garrison_. I could have run a program to try and get readings, to probe them with earth based code to let them pick up to disrupt them and shake them. I could have done so many things, and yet you kept me in the dark while you chose to go fly out guns blazing on a hunch. You-“  
“Stephanie!” His voice was steel and sharp. It cut her anger and she saw the absolute pure rage in his face. She’d disrespected him, questioned him. In front of his generals no less.  
“Need I remind you of your place _pet_?” He sneered down at her, determined to see her submission. A firm reminder just what he expected of her and what he would do if she stepped out of line. And she had crossed it far enough already. They both knew that.

But she was human, a woman, and she was angry. Self-preservation had her bow, but spite had her speak.  
“If you are killed Master,” she knew her place, she knew to submit, “does it ever occur to you that I will die with you?” Her words were as sharp as she could make them, and she fought back the tremble in her tone. He died, his protection over her would end. And while she may have proved she could do work, there was a vast difference between outright slavery and servitude in Galran society. Slavery would have meant, at best, being treated as scum but still allowed what work she did. At worst? She didn’t want to entertain what some galrans did to non-galran slaves for kicks.

He was silent, the entire deck was, save for the loud fury filled breathing of the man who ruled them all, who commanded them. Who owned Stephanie.

“So, your anger is not just with my decision to omit your presence but on your fear that my demise will signal your own?” He was speaking pointedly at her, devoid of a title. Determining the level of how he would punish her no doubt, the woman rationalized.  
“Yes Master.” Another submission. “I have no intention of losing my rank or position due to unforeseen circumstances. Much less, lose my life over something so easily avoidable.” Head down, she waited for him, heart now in her throat, hammering away.

“You have a point my explorer.” Fire and ice swelled in her breast as two things hit her at once. One was his cold tone, the other was the title her used, one he’d not called her since he’d claimed her.  
“ **A** point,” He continued, “as for the rest it seems you will require a reminder of your place. Ezor, escort Stephanie to the ring. It seems she needs a lesson on just who she is dealing with.”   
Ezor’s usually mirth filled eyes were confused as Stephanie looked up, briefly catching Lotor’s gaze.

Anger and lust. All those promises he told her flared back to the front of her mind and sent a wash of heat to her face and between her legs. Turning heel, Galra’s Paladin walked with General Ezor towards what she could only assume would be a rather vicious and no doubt painful beating.   
“You made him angry.” Ezor whispered once they had left the main deck. “But-“  
“But he liked it.” Stephanie finished, allowing herself to smirk as the light went off in Ezor’s head.  
“Oh, you’re tricky. No wonder he likes you.” She kept smiling.   
“Any advice for a girl going to meet her lover out in the ring?” She asked, not feeling the slightest bit of shame. She was too terrified to feel shame yet.  
Ezor hummed, before suggesting that she not hold back at all, and if he got her on her back, to roll and expose her backside to him. The sudden submission will probably help make him shorten the confrontation as to take her back to his room sooner. The apir smirked and giggled like school girls as they arrived at the ring, Stephanie asking about post battle ‘engagements’ and what to expect from Lotor, if this had happened before, (apparently not). 

But Ezor did suggest to casually remove her main chest plate mid battle after she worked up a decent sweat, both for mobility, and to entire Lotor further. Apparently, on a rare night when she’d retired early, Lotor had told the generals how he rather liked it when Stephanie was out of armor, as it highlighter her ‘delightfully human assets’. 

An hour later, mentally and physically ready, Stephanie went through the gates of the gladiator ring for a second time. This time her opponent did not snarl and sneer, rather he stood, poised and deceptively calm as she approached and held up her blade. The match started with the strike of a hammer on steel, and he struck her twice with one move.

His voice calling her his dearest, and his sword slicing across her cheek in a thin ribbon of red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But does she get the dick? Find out on the next episode, [Cue Netflix style credit roll]


	15. Humanity is lost as fast as it is taken

There was a reason that Glarans did not approve of hair pulling or ear touching in public. In battle, it was the equal to a crotch shot, the hitting of a sensitive part that was undignified and a ‘low blow’. The other less spoken of reason was just in the fact that nine times out of ten, it was a sensual act and could be seen as a display of dominance, (like hair pulling often was), or submission and placation, (which was why most galrans shied away from ears on the whole as it tended to be quite pleasing when touched gently). So Stephanie of course, decided that if calling her dearest white trying to literally slice her to ribbons was Lotor’s game? She would play it, and she would play to win. If not with hair pulling or ear toughing, then other, more subtle ways.

Grunting back when he swung out and tried to use her unsteady footing against her, she ducked low, one hand reaching back to displace her weight and prevent her fall. It was like dancing, only minus the music and more violent. One hand on the ground, one holding her blade, she pushed herself back up with a spin, swinging her leg to force Lotor to back away lest he want his legs taken from under him. Distance gained, it was not a moment later that the prince was back within striking range, his own features marred with a look somewhere in the middle of righteous anger and unbridled dark lust for violence. Cruelty was not beneath him, she knew, but unlike his tactics and plans, this was a battle, and here the only thing he could do was try and predict her moves, her actions, and anticipate where she’d go next so he might cut her off. 

He would call her dearest, igniting her own twisted sense of lust and devotion to him?  
She’d react in kind.

Rushing forward, blade angled, she managed to gaze his arm with a shallow cut before being forced back, his sword nearly taking her own arm in retribution. His blood was a faint line, and she couldn’t help that smugness creep to her face as she ran a thumb down to catch the faint line on the metal.  
It tasted better than she thought it would. No wonder it was such an overdone cliché in Hollywood. The rush of tasting enemy blood was immense. More so when she saw his Adam’s apple bob and pupils turn to near slits when she tasted him.

“You’re move _Master_ ” She said, lowering her center of gravity, holding up her sword ready to defend. Unlike Balrung, she didn’t have the advantage of being nimble and light on her feet. Lotor was every inch a seasoned, battle hardened warrior, who had mastered his sword doubtlessly from the age he could first wield it to now. All Stephanie had was her wits and her words. 

That and a slight amount of alien knowledge and bedroom practices. It was better than nothing she figured.

Swing after swing, it was clear to any that Lotor was toying with her, letting her weaken herself by using her stamina against her. He pushed only enough to give a show, to give her a false upper hand then he’d take it back. It was a cat and mouse game, and while she knew it, she wondered just what it was that Lotor aimed to do, allowing the rest of his men see her be so soundly beaten. 

A clash of metal to metal, his blade caught her chest plate and the slide of metal on metal rang in her ears.

He was reminding her of her place, he was establishing he was above her so why make it such a spectacle? Why diminish her?

He lunged, she dodged.  
Lotor never did anything without thought, every move was planned, every action detailed. He wanted something from this, something that he couldn’t tell her, but needed her to figure out. He expected her to understand him in part, to understand their relationship, and this was new territory, new ground. A fight, a challenge, it was a test of his authority.

She blinked when scowled, her own sword faltering in her hand when they clashed once more. Her strength starting to fade and it showing. 

Pride.

This was not just a matter of her place, but of her pride, of his, of if she would have courage to face him and the conviction to carry it through.

Ezor had told her to distract him to remove the chest plate. She did. She knew that if she fell to expose her backside. But there wouldn’t be a need. That would have changed the dynamic, brought sex to the front, made both of them look weak, look smitten and infatuated. This was about pride, this was about survival and strength.

His breathing was heavier when he ran his gaze over her chest eye flicking down then back to her face clear appreciation for her display for her view and understanding alone.

He lifted his sword and lunged, she dropped to her knees.

His blade grazed her head, pain tricking down her ear and blood down her neck. She was on her knees, her sword in hand, tip buried into the ground of the arena. He stood in front of her, waiting and she held his gaze, admired those strange blue eyes surrounded by the soft yellow.

“I won’t allow myself to be killed by anyone.” She said as loud as she could willing her voice to be heard by the crowd. “I won’t die because I am a slave. I will not die because of Voltron or some insolent cur shooting me in a ship.” She stared at him, her master and lover, her captor and only shelter from a universe that would be against her. “Only you have the right to end my life. You claimed me, and you are the only one I would let kill me.” She reached up, grabbing his sword and pulled it down, laid it over her chest. “You are my Master, and the only one who will get to kill me Prince Lotor. I will accept no less, I expect no less.” She held the blade there, waiting for his rebuttal, for his approval, for his understanding.

He always did seem to understand her.

He tilted his head and her hand felt from his blade and she sank lower to the ground, bowing until her forehead met dirt. There was a pressure then, his hand on the back of her scalp, holding, not shoving her down or keeping her there, but warning. Be still. Be silent.

“I chose you Stephanie Graves, because I saw your potential.” He let her head go, and she felt his blade run close to her neck.  
“You will not die today.” He pulled the blade back, and she shook, breath leaving her in nervousness. There would be pain, she knew. He couldn’t simply dismiss her actions. He had to make a show of it, they both did.  
The kick hurt, and her body rolled, crumpling in on itself as she landed, coughing and clutching her side. He came again, another kick, this one like the first, and she gave into it, let herself react to the pain and wretch. She was tired and sore, and in pain.

The pull on her hair came next and she screamed at him wordless as he threw her back to the center of the arena, allowing her a small time to wipe the bile from her face, to lift her head to look at him.

“I’m sorry.” She said. And he waited.  
“I am sorry!” Her voice louder.  
“For what?” He asked, those in the stands cheering, enjoying her humiliation.

“For questioning, for doubting.” She licked her lips and dared to meet his gaze, hungry and thrilled. “For defiance.” He held his sword out and his voice sounded clear as crystal when he gave his command.

“Submit to me, my Paladin.” She wanted to laugh. This act of theater exciting her even in the pain, even in her utter humiliation. They had parts to play, a wordless exchange and understanding and desire for things they couldn’t have.  
She crawled to him, hands and knees. She kept his gaze as she lowered herself to the blood and dirt touched metal.  
She kissed his sword, just like they did in the movies. A loyal knight swearing fealty to a king. It was not a galran gesture. Galran was to grab the blade and cut your palm. Stephanie had to exceed expectations. A finger pulled down the sword’s edge, red blood dripping into sand, she let it bleed, let the pain blend into the others. 

She brought her own blood to her lips. Coppery, she coated her mouth with the red fluid, slowly standing until she was eye level with the man who controlled her fate.  
“My Master.” She went in, kissed his chin with blood stained lips.  
“My Prince.” She kissed his jaw, her blood smearing on his lavender skin.  
“ _My Lotor._ ” She whispered it for him, lowering her final kiss to his chest, to the place his heart would lay under the armor.

“Command me.” She needed to know the next step, the next act in this play they had begun in the arena.

He was smiling, all pride, all confidence.  
“Destroy Volton.”

She felt to her knew, arm swiftly brought over her heart as moreof her blood coated her hand, dripped onto earth.  
“Yes Sir.”  
“Obey me.”  
“Yes Sir.”  
“Submit to me.”  
“Yes Sir.”  
“Swear yourself to me.” 

She hadn’t expected it, and her head snapped up and her eyes widened as she realized that she’d been caught in his trap.

“Forever.” The word fell from her faster than she would later ever care to admit.  
Stephanie lowered her head, wanting to cry. She had given another part of herself to him. Another part of her humanity lost.  
“I am forever yours.” There was no lie. No matter how long it would be, no matter when it would be, while she might one day be freed of her Galran chains, he would never let this part of her go. These moments belonged to him. A part of her would belong to him.

As he walked out of the arena, leaving her behind to shed what few tears she had in silence and shame, Stephanie was faced with the knowledge that he would keep every promise, but in exchange, she would give him a part of herself to survive.

She could only begin to guess which part he had taken.


	16. Life is lost as a price is paid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the good shit is back

Shaking as she got out of the arena, Stephanie knew she must have looked a right mess. Red puffed up eyes, small streaks where her tears had run down her skin. Dust and blood on her along with sweat. Yet it changed nothing. Lotor would be expecting her. Expecting her to placate his needs with her body and her surrender. The woman was now partially of her right mind, knowing that this was twisted. Wasn’t her display enough? Wasn’t the show fine, why did he need this from her, why couldn’t she be allowed to wallow in her own despair over her lost humanity?

The answer was painfully simple: Lotor wasn’t human. He had no humanity, so expected none and had no understanding of it and how deeply it was in the woman’s psyche. Stripped down of her armor she marched to his rooms clad only in the under suit that was torn and filthy. He would like her like this she realized. Going to him clad in remnants of battle would entice him, perhaps please him. And even knowing as she marched to him for the sole purpose of carnal embrace, she wanted to please him, she wanted his approval and his praise, she wanted it. She shouldn’t, it gave him control over her, and worse, it stole a part of her independence, made herself over for his own twisted purposes. 

When she reached his doors, she didn’t realize she’d been staring at the floor and not straight ahead. She’d been beaten, looking weak in her walk. Fear laced up her spine- any galran could have seen her. Show no weakness, never waiver. But she had. Cursing she took a deep breath as she put her palm to the door, waiting for it to open. When it did, she expected him to be composed, waiting patiently.

Not already nude, hand around his cock, furiously stroking and looking like he’d kill the next thing that she saw. And blue eyes saw her and only her in that moment of pure wild lust. Blood and sex and power- galran and base.

Stephanie slammed the door behind her in time only to have him lunge for her, grabbing her by her hair and forcing her to the ground. Pain everywhere, fatigued from the fight, she moaned helplessly as his hands found the seams of the undersuit, pulling and ripping. He didn’t even care to her preparedness, lifting her hips and tearing away the scraps of cloth that stood between him and his reward, his prize, his pet and paladin.

His cock burned as it stretched her open, slamming deep with an undignified squelch as her own misguided arousal eased Stephanie’s discomfort slightly.  
She moaned for him, hating herself for enjoying it. It was the second time she’d gone to his chambers anticipating perhaps pleasuring him, but this time it was basic and unspoken what they sought and wanted. His cock thrust into her roughly over and over again, his nails digging into her skin and his breath was ragged as he covered her prone form with his own, chasing his release in her willing warm body. But just as he used her, she used him as much as she was able.  
Tilting her hips so his cock would run over that spot inside her that made her clench and ignited a fire in her lower torso, she chased her own pleasure. Mewed his name as he would grunt and groan and growl like a beast. Looking at him she couldn’t help the loud moan of pleasure that left her. He was sweaty, hair clinging to skin and his look feral and so perfectly masculine.  
“Lotor-” She moaned his name and he groaned in response, her walls coming down around him and refusing to let go as he flooded her insides with his cum. Her jaw went slack as she felt it, that hot rush of fluid into her tightened channel, knowing that he wasn’t holding back now, he was determined to fill her until his cum would literally be flowing out of her.

One orgasm wrought from the sudden coupling, he removed himself from her pussy suddenly, the ridges of his cock brushing over her g-spot and making Stephanie cry out at both the simultaneous loss and stimulation.  
“Submit Stephanie.” His voice was ragged, his hands hurtful as they grabbed her hair and dragged her to his bed, throwing down so she was bent over, legs spread wide. As she thought, he wasted no time establishing his domination, not caring that his own cum had partially slipped down her thighs before he thrust into her a second time. 

He didn’t want her to think she had any control, that she meant anything to him. But she told herself that was a lie. If she meant nothing, he’d have replaced her. He’d have killed her. He wouldn’t be letting go of his princely veneer and fucking her into his mattress if she meant nothing.

As he held her hips she pushed off his bed and did her best to rock back into him, knowing that unlike when he’d claimed her and been so kind to her needs, this was not for her anymore. This was for him. She’d submit, she’d show him she understood, that he had her devotion, that he had that part of her that he’d stolen away.  
“Lotor-” She tried to talk between his hard thrusts, the wet sound of his cock slipping in and out of her wet channel obscene as it was stimulation.  
“Fuck!” He made the pain feel good. He made her feel alive. “Master! Oh master- punish me.” Her eyes crossed as he lifted her torso so that she was forced to balance on her toes, rest her weight on her torso and the bed.  
“Ah, yes, yes!” The angle was deeper, and she could feel how his cum and her own fluids were mixing no doubt; being swirled into a frothy white by the same cock that fit so snug in her, almost unable to leave if she squeezed down on him as hard as she could. 

“Punish me master! Fuck your paladin until she screams!” Stephanie’s fists curled into sheets as he pulled back, hips no longer aiming for speed but for depth. And deep he did go, cock managing to make her vision blur as he pulled a rough and sudden orgasm from her body.

“How dare you!” He pulled her hips higher again, until all her weight was on her torso, her feet dangling behind her. Lotor’s height had never been used like this but she rather found she liked this sudden abuse of it.  
“I did not give you permission to cum! You dare? You DARE?” He grunted, that feeling of him spilling inside her making her mewl his name in desperation. It benediction for more.

Anything to chase away the shame she felt in having lost to him.  
“Please-” She whimpered she he pulled free again, let his cum slip away and down her thighs in a sticky wet mess.  
“Please- master.” She mewed for him. “Let me be good. I can be good. So good. So good master. I want to be so good for you.” He just shoved her further onto the bed let her fall into a sprawl of spent limbs and sex covered skin. Stephanie didn’t have the energy to do much but let him have his way with her, only to stay awake, to beg, to mew and moan.

A vial to her lips, she drank greedily, feeling her entire throat and jaw go numb before he dragged her head to his cock. Weak as she was, she moaned in pleasure as Lotor began slipping the bulk of his cock down her throat before fucking her face. 

Cum, spit, tears- it all mixed together as she let go like he’d done. Let him have his fill of her. He never went deep enough to choke, and when he did slide to the base, it was to feel himself in her throat, feel that bump that signaled how far she could take him.

Another orgasm, he pulled out halfway, coating her face with the final remnants of his seed. He looked a little less wild, a little more happy at the sight of her covered in cum and tears. She found she liked it too.  
“Naughty paladin. You like this. You like being used. Being made lesser. You crave it don’t you? Crave me?”  
He growled as he moved between her thighs again, Thrusting back into her body, uncaring, unkind. This was how galran men fucked. Total control, complete domination.  
“You defy me, expect-” he grunted, “forgiveness. No, this is your punishment.” He moaned into her ear as he quickened his pace, Stephanie helpless but to let him have his way with her body.  
“You’re mine Stephanie.” His voice purred out as he pushed deep, sinking into her until she was certain he could go no further.  
“This part of you, this is mine.” He slid out slowly before thrusting in as deep as her body would allow.  
“Forever.” He moaned as she thrashed at the sudden rush of cum filling her, far more than previously. Her mind was giving up, shut down as her body was too weak and tired and enjoying his abuse, his violence.

“Admit it Stephanie.” His voice was cold, even while he spoke softly in her ear.  
“Admit what is mine.” She moaned his name, wishing she had the energy to cry. The will to deny him, to defy him.

“My life.” She managed to pant out, her body spent and used and fucked. Her answer made him laugh. She felt tears threaten to rise but they would not. They refused to obey even her feelings, just like the rest of her body refused to obey her.

“Oh no.” He moaned, hips slowly rotating as he lazily thrust into her, sending cum deep into her, pushing it out with vulgarity she didn’t want to hear.  
“This? This is mine.” He kissed her neck like a lover might.  
“I made you my Paladin Stephanie, everything you were, everything you are now?” He moaned as his cock finally softened and slipped free.  
“Is mine now, and forever.”

_“You are mine.”_


	17. Plans are made while others are hidden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut, followed by plot. No beta per my usual 2am updates

“Oh, Oh-“ Stephanie moaned as she felt him move inside of her, hips undulating as Lotor took his time abusing her body, ‘testing her’ as he put it. After their spar in the arena, he’d taken a distinct interest in exploring her obedience in and out of the bedroom. In practice, he would on occasion challenge her in combat, him and Zethrid taking the time to ensure she was in top form, that she was progressing at a decent rate. So far, Lotor found her favoring lighter weaponry and working at a distance. She had no taste for the whip however, (outside of his chambers), and guns were simple to use. She was a decent shot but no sharp shooter. No, her skill lay in the glaive. Something that seemed to please the prince endlessly when they would square off, usually leaving her breathless and him more than excited at her fury and barely held bloodlust against him.

In those spars she let her anger push her. She let her hate, her shame, regret, disgust come out. It gave her the strength to push past the pain, the exhaustion. Yet each time he’d win. Each time he won, he was due his reward. Just how that night she lay on his bed, nude save for the top he’d specific told her to wear that day. It was not a bra so much as a series of straps that supported her breasts up yet covered nothing. Lotor had kept to his word, personally choosing her intimates and messaging which ones to wear when he wished to see her in them on any particular day.

“Ah- Master!” Stephanie’s sharp cry was met with a particularly low growl from her lover and master. He pulled her hips closer, thrusting into her with the intend to go as deep as the angle would allow. He loved to bottom out in her she found, loved filling her with cum and keep her spread open to watch a few drops slip out as her pussy would clench, trying to keep it inside her. 

He had never verbally told her his ‘kinks’, but after he did the same thing several times over, Stephanie was very sure that aside from the galran need to procreate and claim, Lotor just really enjoyed seeing his partner worn and debauched.   
The lingerie was just his honest to god fetish. He did like having her arrive at his room, strip down and then sit on his couch or bed, discussing her progress as if the sexual tension in the room was not thick and heavy enough to cut with a knife. She wouldn’t say how much she liked it either. Those days, he sometimes didn’t even want sex so much as he wanted touch. To sit on his couch, her head in his lap while he ran fingers in her hair, reading while she rested. Some days he took to brushing her hair, or having her brush his own. Sometimes, he’d have her bathe with him and they’d wash each other’s hair. It was a strange intimacy, being ‘claimed’. In her eyes, she’d accuse him of trying to seduce her, make her fall into complacency, to feel that this was normal and okay- that it wasn’t text book Stockholm syndrome. 

But she was smarter. Knew better. He was manipulative sure, but these little things were typical of claimed pairs. They were actions common and done to affirm the bond of the partners, to establish that even without sex there would be a dominant and submissive, a give and take. Tonight, he was taking her, enjoying her body’s yielding softness as he drove her to the edge of orgasm before pulling away. She couldn’t think right when he had her like this, when he fucked her past the point of thought and into pure base lust. That precipice where he’d dangle her from until she screamed, begged him to let her go. To give her release and grant her pleasure.  
Like this, she couldn’t think how much he owned of her. How long he would burn into her memories, her skin, her soul. He was right, he owned her. He owned so much of her she didn’t know where it ended. Her humanity was not entirely her own anymore. She’d sacrificed a part of it away to survive. Another part she gave to him, she’d admit. She gave a part of herself to him, because he understood what she wanted, what she craved. 

Even now, the fear of death, of being made a slave, of being forced to eventually kill her own kind existed in her. But Lotor owned that part of her, he created a new part of her. Was creating a new part of her. 

But in his bed, his cock slipping out of her abused pussy, her legs shaking while he gathered their shared fluids to lubricate her rear entrance, Stephanie didn’t have to think about it. All she had to do was focus on him. On the way he wanted her to reach back and spread herself open. On how to present herself like a galran female placating her lover. All she had to focus on was her breathing, relaxing, giving into his direction as he poured lubricant between her cheeks, preparing her for his newest perversion. 

She should have never have told him about probing, in hindsight.   
Even if she did find she loved watching him in the mirror slowly sink into that part of her, feeling him fill her up to the point she was left as gasping writhing hot mess begging for him to fuck her more, to cum inside of her and plug her up.

By the night’s end, Stephanie was sore, sated, and curled in his arms, smiling as her fingers twirled the fine white hairs on his chest while he ran soothing circles along her spine, his gentle purr lulling her to a dreamless sleep.

The night gave way to day, and on that day, she found herself being asked a particularly odd question.

“You want to know if there would be a way to terrorize the paladins of Voltron?” Lotor had them eating breakfast in his rooms again, naked, save for the new set of lingerie he’d chosen for her, (this pair was a lovely shade of pastel orange with white cream accents. Pure lacework, her breasts were not supported but left to move ‘freely’ as he liked to call it).   
“You have worked on code injection before, both in your native binary and terrain forms, as well as our Galran. I suspect on our next encounter, a message of who I am would suffice, but what of something innocuous? It would-“  
“No.” Stephanie sat across from him cutting the little slices of what tasted like the closest thing to bacon she’d eaten. “You want them afraid, you must give them a hope and a fear.” She looked at her lover and commander.  
“You still have the remnants of my ship-“ Lotor gave her a look. The Look that she’d come to know as his ‘how did you know that I didn’t tell you’ look. He did forget at times she was prone to her own investigative work.   
“-Don’t glare at me my prince. I’ve known for a while. But, as I was saying, we need to get the hopeful yet afraid.”  
“You want to use the remains of your ship as bait.” Stephanie nodded, cutting into the runny yoke of a friend egg.

“A terrain exploration and research vessel this far out in deep space? Let me set up a running distress signal on it. Recode it so it will appear congruent to when I was-“ She looked at him, and his blue eyes met her own. She swallowed air.  
“-when I was recruited to the cause. Toss in the signs that it was a Galra ship that found our own, corpses and anything of value scrapped. But, a single last missive. A survivor, begging that whoever found the transmission to save them, to warn others- all the things a band of heroic do good knights are prone to do.”  
“And how would they run across this signal? It would need to be weak, and space is so vast-“ Stephanie smiled, lifting her fork to point it at Lotor, who took a moment to be disgusted by her lack of table manners.

“We start a rumor of course. Send a few plants across some recent systems that they’ve liberated. Use a few traders who fly in and out of the major hubs to carry the word. A human craft in deep space? A stange coded signal no alien knows? With luck, someone would be kind enough to carry the code to them for us. But the ship is simply bait. My message could hint that we found something you wanted, and I hid it. Lured, they will go, they will try to find answers. Then?”  
Lotor was smiling, pleased thus far, expectant.  
“Then you pass me the salt. These eggs are horribly under seasoned.” He scoffed, tossing her the salt with a small smirk at her insolence. She knew him well enough. She’d invited him to punish her for that later.

Salted eggs eaten the Paladin of the empire went on. “As I was saying, they take the bait. When they do, we engage. Put up a fight, destroy the remains of the ship, and, making them think we have perhaps destroyed any hints as to what you were after.”  
“And what am I after my star?” She shivered at his tone. Oh, morning would not end for her until mid-day at this rate now that she’d teased his libido once again.  
“A well of raw quintessence. But while they fight us, I send a second code. Encrypted of course. Details that I have survived, that a human is captive on your ship.”

“And tell me how this ends dearest. Skip to the end, I have other plans in our day you know.” She bet he did, from the way his cock was slowly growing and coming to full arousal.

“It ends with them attempting a rescue of me. And them finding me in Galran armor-“ she smiled, setting down her fork and knife, “-utterly loyal-“ Lotor’s blue eyes remained fixed on her as she walked over to sit on her lover’s lap.  
“-and absolutely beholden to my prince.”

He moaned, kissing her with a slow building enthusiasm. “Are you beholden to me my Paladin?”

Stephanie smiled. “Of course not my Lotor, but then, would you have me any other way?”   
He laughed, pulling her on top of him, falling into the couch.

_“Never.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. 
> 
> There was some plot. Fucking wild.


	18. Revelations are found while pain is made real

The code itself was duplicitously easy to write Stephanie mused as she finished the second series of encryptions. Thus far, she’d managed to get the signal going in cycle, running off a makeshift power source that would, essentially, keep it going for months in theory, if not years in deep space.   
Such was the power of solar.   
Luck and providence. That’s what she told herself. They had to think that her little set-up had been made in haste and with a limited resourced at her disposal under duress. A challenge, but, she made do. The main issue had been Lotor wishing to have some sort of way to track the signal’s output. But, so long as a galra ship remained nearby enough to pick up on the signal, they’d be fine. Besides, she reminded him. A remote drone ship, broken in a small fire fight in space wouldn’t be out of the norm. Her vessel may have been exploratory in nature, but even they had ways of defense. 

He was a truly brilliant commander and strategist, but he could be so demanding and invasive about what exactly was happening at times. Twice she had to directly confront him and use her hands and mouth to play at his nature, placating his needless worry with little touches in his hair and kisses to his chin and jaw. It always felt intimate when she had to do it, and she knew she really shouldn’t have. Ever since the claim’s night, (as she now called it), it was harder at times to remind him that to her, such things carried emotional value, where as to him-

To him they only showed obedience. That she would submit to him and beg him for his approval. The difference in their cultures was vast, and sometimes, she did wish she was or could be more galran. That maybe, he could try to be more human, try to understand her.  
But to think he would was foolish. He did not love her, and would never love her in the way she needed, (rather than wanted, she told herself, adamant). She was human, he, galran. The galrans could love, but not him. Not with her. If they loved it was not the same way a human did. It was nothing like how a human loved.   
Thinking about him and the state of her heart made her miss home. It made her wish, a small, dark, selfish part wish that voltron’s paladins would succeed. That they’d find the signal and well and truly rescue her. But at the same time, and even darker part of her knew the truth.  
For her to be free, Lotor would have to die.  
And despite everything, she did not want him to die.

Twistedly, she’d fallen for some part of him, her captor. His charisma? His passion? Or was she just so broken now, after months in captivity that he’d managed to recondition her enough that she well and truly had succumb to Stockholm syndrome? Probably Stockholm.   
She didn’t want to say she loved him.  
But as she injected the code for a test run, she felt herself crying as her mind came to one concise conclusion from all observations and reasoning.  
Stephanie Graves had fallen in love, and she had done it in order to survive.

Days past after her realization, and as she shared her meal with him at that week’s end, she picked at her food, moving it about her plate to mimic the notion she’d eaten. Melencholic, was what she told him. She felt _melancholic_ about her first real direct betrayal against her own people, her own species. Until now, her actions had been faceless. Her work indirect and affecting those she didn’t know, those that she held no real value to because she’d become so far unattached from her own humanity and morals. Lotor has sighed and reminded her that he had so far, no reason to think her stupid enough to betray him. She’d seen how he dealt with traitors, how he would handle insubordination. How he would reprimand her personally for failures and shortcomings.  
Her body shivered at his words from more than just the slight terror she felt.

But he let the conversation drift into an uneasy silence. He did not pry further, only watched her with his blue eyes, making her feel small and weak. Making her feel more like his prisoner than ever before.

They chose system a few hundred lightyears away from the Sol system. Far enough that the ship and it’s crew would have survived a wormhole, far enough to not be seen or caught by earth’s more primitive trackers. Which Stephanie admit, was a bit funny, to realize just exactly how primitive earth was in terms of space travel. She’d managed along with her few aids, to recode the entire ship’s data perfectly to stimulate the wormhole metrics and would have been alive crew’s biometrics. To perfectly catalogue the sequence of events before the ship would have been captive, invaded, then torn asunder. 

After that is was just a matter of waiting. And Lotor, for all his patience, spent the time after the plant had been dropped having her check on it nearly hourly if felt like, save while she slept. Her pilot training was taken to new heights, his insistence that after this, he wanted to send her out, give her genuine experience. She didn’t think too hard on it, maybe she should have. But then again, Stephanie should have done a lot of things.  
Like stop going to his room on some nights, wordlessly curling into his bed and seeking the comfort of his proximity, of his gentle touch. She should have stopped asking him to read to her when he called for her company, finding his voice relaxing and soothing. There was no sex in those weeks of work, of waiting. On occasion he’d tell her to strip down, long enough to admire his choice of lingerie on her body before having her join him for bed. He’d sometimes have her parade herself naked in his chambers, doing menial tasks while he’d watch with a twisted smile at her unease and embarrassment.   
Intimate as they had become, lovers as they were, his eyes on her naked body always made her squirm, both from anticipation and fear. She craved a part of him, that sadistic part of him that would dominate her, own her, ruin her under his body in a well conducted orchestra of sound and sensations.   
The masochist in her had come to adore the sweet agony those coveting looks gave her. The pleasure his eyes promised. The pain-physical, mental, and emotional-welcomed in her broken and twisted heart.

She reflected that shouldn’t have asked him why he would refrain in those days, because his answer made something in her hurt on a level she didn’t want to face.  
“It is unnecessary and a waste of energy and time.” To him perhaps. She knew he refrained from typical galran claim behaviors at times. But she wasn’t galra. A normal galra pair would have been intimate at least monthly, even if it lacked emotion. The proximity would have been enough. But it had been weeks by the time the paladins of Voltron had caught wind of the code and were rumored to be on the hunt for it’s source. She was isolated. She was craving affirmation as her heart and mind struggled to rationalize her betrayal of her native home.

He was her only constant and he was pushing her away it felt like, forcing her to confront the ever-mounting horror of her own actions and it’s consequence. Maybe it was on purpose. It likely was, as she felt herself crumbling, falling apart in her own mind even while she was given new work. More intense tasks, more demanding training. Her output, her development was still skyrocketing, but her mental state was deteriorating.

It was only when the lions appeared in the sector, in the trap yet to spring that she broke down. Only when she saw them in the camera feed-small, human, alive and warm and expressive and see the concern and hope and fear and worry and determination-that everything crashed down into her.  
It was only when she heard the voice of Shirogane, once a mentor, saying he recognized her voice, her name, that it brought everything back. She was human. She was, had been, in advanced courses and he’d been one of the guest instructors. Of course he’d remember her. She was one of only two women in a room of over 100 men. As she stared at the screen in horror, in hope, she knew she was crying, that Lotor was watching her break, watching and smiling as the last bit of her humanity clung on with desperation to what they said. To what their leader, a man, a boy, she didn’t know said.

_“We’ll save her.”_

She fell to the floor of the ship as the plan she’d made was carried out; as ships attacked the lions and their paladins, that they struggled while her second signal was no doubt being picked up by the Altean ship. The one she’d made begging to be saved and telling them she was still alive.  
When she recorded it, she thought her emotional ties to earth had been worn away, that she no longer would crave it, wish for it, want it like she once had.

On the floor, tears running down her face as she shook, clinging to hope and desperation, she looked at the lions, wishing they could understand, wishing, hoping they could hear her real plea then. Silent in the air, screaming in her heart and soul.  
She wanted to be saved. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be free. See her. Hear her. Save her. Save her before she lost herself inside the madness of her own mind and heart.

Her ship exploded. Debris now dust in space. Lotor’s voice cut through the silence as the Altean ship and the Lions vanished into a wormhole.

“My darling.” He whispered into her ear, his hands circling her waist as he crouched beside her on the floor.  
“You are so beautiful like this. My star, my gem, my love.” Her heart froze her breath stopped. He was lying. Lying. He had to be lying. He couldn't. He said he wouldn't. He would never. Not with her. Never with her.   
“I wanted to see the fear in your perfect blue eyes back when we captured you.” She turned and faced him, and saw something she never wanted to see, but had known. Known existed the whole time.  
“But this look of desperation, of longing, is so much **better**.”   
Stephanie screamed in pain as he bit her neck, the prince forcing all to witness his claim on her, over her. She screamed because she hated herself for the emotions she felt when his teeth broke her skin.

Joy. Elation. Peace. Acceptance. Happiness. Bliss.   
Affirmation.

She hated herself as she screamed and wept in his hold on the floor, the knowing watching eyes of his generals upon them. She hated herself for knowing what he said, what she felt. 

Love, for the monster he was, and the one she had become.


	19. Love is won while the heart is gone

Stephanie had tried for a long time to not feel the emotion that had crawled it’s way into her and settled in her throat. It had carved a spot in her chest, deep and painful. Lanced a hole in the bottom of her stomach so emotions might fall through and leave her empty and hallow. The emotion she dared not name because she knew what admitting it would mean for her. For her own sanity. For her own hope of freedom however fleeting, however final it would be in it’s requirements.   
Love.

A four letter word that had terrified her on earth because love outside of her passion for work, for space, would only be used to undermine her credibility. A woman couldn’t be seen as needing a male partner. She had to be fierce, independent, self-reliant. She’d pushed aside her hopes of romance. Her dreams of passion. Her yearning for a love that would leave her breathless, contented, supported, and happy. She’d thought she’d ripped that part of herself out and crushed it. Boxed it away like a dirty secret.  
Lotor had found her secrets. Her desires. He had lured her to expose her own need of validations, of support and trust and reward- He had seen through her façade and had forced her to her knees in self-aware submission. He had seen Stephanie, Galaxy Garrison Graduate, Engineer and Programmer and made her his Paladin. A means to an end. A perfect, dedicated solider who would rise to his challenges and come from their ashes reborn each time, stronger than when she had been consumed.   
But then he also had seen Stephanie Graves, woman, craving freedom from a world that had bound her and all she was because it was the only way to achieve her dreams. A woman who had sacrificed herself for nothing and was barely holding herself together. He saw a woman who had reacted only as a means to survive, knowing her place, knowing she would have to endure to have hope.

He’d taken her shell and ripped it apart with his trust in her. He’d smashed the mask that kept back her desires and cravings of touch long denied. And now, as she wept in his arms on the command deck, blood running from his bite, he’d ripped out her heart and devoured it in front of all to see.

He’d given her stars. He’d given her space- freedoms that so many would fight and die for. He’d given her a hope of a time one day where she would finally be her own person. But not before he would take a part of her for himself, knowing that no matter what she would always return to him. That the part she’d thought she’d denied all, even herself, and thought was beyond his reach.   
He wanted her fear and he’d had it at the start. But fear of death was nothing like the fear of love.  
Death was a finality, an end that gave way to a vast unknown and would offer him nothing. A look of terror and fear of one’s life was a dime a dozen.  
But the fear of love, the fear of being controlled by something that would destroy you from the inside and you’d be unable to stop it no matter how hard you fought was an entirely different fear. That was the fear he craved from her. That was the fear that he adored. Her fear was her love. Because in her love of him, was her fear of him. In her fear of him and all he could do, was her love of him. 

His soft touch was soothing as she sobbed, the echo of the young man’s voice ringing out like a siren. They would save her. But to be saved would mean Lotor would have to die. Lotor, manipulative, intelligent, dominating, vindictive, tender, aware Lotor would leave her. Forever. It was a finality, something non-negotiable and unavoidable. She wanted to be saved. She wanted to be loved. She wanted freedom. She wanted to be owned. She wanted what he could not give her yet could offer her just enough to keep her happy and safe in his care.

Somewhere on the way, he’d found her, and had bound himself to her so she’d never let him go.   
Just as she knew, he would never let her go.  
Stockholm Syndrome had nothing on this.

Hiccupping as she sniffed back tears, now lessening, she rocked into his form, still curled around her own like he was shielding her from the eyes of his generals.   
“Do you understand my darling?” His voice was rich, laced with cruel affection. “You are mine. This is what it means, my love.” His love- this was his love. Cruel and saccharine sweet. “Your hope for their rescue will spell an end to this, to all you have done, all you have gained. But you know that don’t you?” She pushed her face into his shoulder, gently biting at his neck, trying to reach the skin under his uniform. She wanted him to take her away, spirit her back to his room to lay in his arms and dream of seeing space. Seeing worlds no other had seen, learning what no others knew.   
“My gem, you give me so much. You passion and pleasure. Your devotion and dedication. My perfect Paladin. I do so adore you.” His embrace tightened, her mouth slipped to the underside of his chin, a stray drop of her blood leaving copper on her tongue and on his skin. 

“Your tears, sorrow and anguish are beautiful.” Were they? She hoped they were, her body felt heavy, cold and separate from her own mind.   
“You ask for stars and I will give them every time. You ask for knowledge I will provide an answer for any question you ask of me. You ask for anything, and I will give it all to you my perfect one. My beloved. You are mine, all of you, it is mine.” Blue eyes looked down at her as his hand tilter her face to look at him, a strange look in his own gaze, soft and uncertain.

“I’m afraid of you.”

Her voice sounded small, weak and afraid, yet his was clear and confident.

“You should be.”

She kissed him, arms wrapping around him as he lifted her up and carried her to his chair, seat them both in it, locked lips and held in each other embrace, unwilling to let go.  
“I love you.” She confessed, the lights of the command deck too bright, forcing her to curl into his lap, bury her face into his side. “And I need to kill you.” 

He ran a hand down her back. Over and over- she was his pet, his plaything. His paladin. His and his alone.  
“But you can’t can you?” He wasn’t looking at her, but rather the spot Voltron had vanished into. 

She kissed his chin, sighing as he seemed to relax then, eyes forlorn, a wish of something she didn’t know what for.  
“No.” Stephanie closed her eyes.  
She wouldn’t be able to kill this man she realized she loved.


	20. Resolution is achieved while fear is lost

Stephanie tried to not think for once. She tried to ignore her own mind, to just relax in the prince’s hold and be nothing, a doll, a limp noodle, a blob. Something basic and not needing thoughts but the longer and harder she tried to not think, the more she ended up thinking. It was like someone had purposely chosen to just set her brain to do the opposite of what she wanted. Stephanie didn’t want to think because when she did, she felt two sides of the very same love.   
On one side, disgust and loathing of herself to have fallen into a depraved and utterly unhealthy relationship with the man who’s lap she currently was seated in. He was her captor, her jailer, her abuser and tormentor. He might have been a prince, (a very attractive alien one at that), but he was absolutely cruel and merciless when it came to his manipulations of both her mental state, her emotions, and her body. He didn’t care for her. He couldn’t, he was probably a narcissist even if Stephanie had no mental health degree and was making pure guess work.

The other side was the opposite. A strange elation and utter bliss that now, for the first time since she could ever recall, she had a place, a purpose and a person who valued her skills for what they were, her sex irrelevant. Oh, he did notice her sex, in fact he was currently stroking a hand over her ass and occasionally squeezing her thigh absentmindedly. But that wasn’t what made him value her, not initially. Now it was like a very pleasing side benefit. But he also cared for her wants and needs. He sought to provide her with the means to have unlimited potential and be able to tap into it. He had gone out of his way to ensure she would not be stopped in her growth, rather, he encouraged her to flourish and adapt and change and challenge everything she knew and wanted to know. He’d made it so nothing could stand in her way if she so desired it. In his own terms, as his own being, Lotor had shown her more faith and acceptance than her own race had for her dreams and aspirations. 

And she had unwittingly, made the choice to devote herself to him beyond simple lip service. 

Vaguely, she knew she couldn’t remain retreated into her own mind as she was. That his touch on her body, assuring and comforting as he intended it, was also a warning. He had openly stated his affection for her, he had said- oh the things he had said. Love. The sudden realization had her shiver in his embrace, and whatever he’d been saying to his generals was cut off.   
No words spoken to her, he just leaned down to kiss her softly, humming to himself, (purring, she corrected, it had come from deeper in his throat and had vibrated). Then he resumed whatever it was he’d been saying. A small touch as it was, it drew her back to him, eyes fluttering as she moved her head out of the crook of his neck, knowing she must have looked utterly wretched. Eyes puffy and red. Wet with unshed tears and vulnerable. 

Stephanie glared when Axca looked at her. So what if she looked a mess. She was doing nothing wrong, and the pity look the general was giving her made a sudden anger flair in her chest.  
She didn’t want pity from them. They didn’t get it. She didn’t need pity. She needed- something. Something raw, painful, something that wasn’t the man under her body making her more than aware that he’d realized she was slowing coming down from her panic attack, slowly returning to herself.

“Sir, your paladin is- she looks like she needs medical sir.“

Stephanie was sure she didn’t think. Sure she hadn’t thought about it. She didn’t remember moving out from his embrace, she didn’t recall grabbing Axca’s neck or slamming her into the console with eerie efficiency. But when all her senses returned, she was looking down at the general, who was both stunned and in pain.   
She did not need pity. She would not be pitied. She couldn’t be seen as weak. Not by anyone. Her display here on the command deck was one of weakness. She had to remind them that she was dangerous. That she was every inch the weapon they were creating.  
“Do not assume that my emotions are cause for concern.” Her voice was painful in her throat. Ragged from crying and dry breaths she’d fought to take when her breakdown had begun.   
“I do not require a physician.” She hissed, letting Axca’s neck go. The galra woman was stronger, but Stephanie had used the shock to her advantage, and the other woman had not fought back, too stunned at the sudden outburst to retaliate.  
Silence filled the deck, eyes locked onto her as her mind filtered through the proper course of action. She’d just made a power display. She’d asserted dominance over a member of the general who’s rank she was supposedly equal to. She’d just until a moment ago, had been in her lover and master’s lap, submissive and utterly pliant.

Command and dominance- these were what Galrans understood.

Lotor was watching her, eyes blown wide as she saw his hard fought control. She was his lover, his pet, and she was asserting power and dominance right in front of him. She swallowed as she noticed his arousal straining the front of his leggings, obvious, letting her know just the effect she was having on him.

Stephanie walked back to him, kissing his lips in rough demand, tasting him, wanting him, her hand reaching down to run fingers over his clothed length.   
“Mine.” Her word, not his.

She left the command station, walking back to her room, head held high.   
Let him come to her for once. Let them think that they might break her spirit with hope. With love. She would love him, embrace him, welcome him without hesitation. But she would not shattered and break. Crack. She had cracked on the command deck. Let them see a part of her that she fought to hide. Now, there was nothing left to hide.

Stephanie closed her eyes as she shut the door to her room behind her, mind resolute. She had cracked, but she would mend. She would bend but not break. Shatter but be fused whole again. She was the Paladin of Lotor.   
She was the lover of Lotor.

He could never love her like she loved him so she would have him in the only way she knew how. She would make him want no other. Desire no other, crave no other. She would become all he wanted and desired. She would own him, just as he owned her.

The door slid open behind her before claws tore at her armor and he forced her down onto her cot fighting her for submission. 

Stephanie would take him, and kill him with her love, even if it would kill her to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its only taken like 50k to get to the main core dynamic/plot of this fic but ya know. It happens. Eventually.


	21. The magic is gone as nothing remains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of an illusion.

It felt like an eternity.   
His ‘affections’ had been demanding and rather brutish, but none the less, Stephanie enjoyed them. He’d grabbed her hair, ran claws down her skin. Slapped her, spanked her, bit her, tormented and tortured her but she’d begged for it all. She’d keened for him, arched her back when he’d given her euphoria and had moaned his name as he’d growled into her neck. He had shown her brutality had she’d enjoyed it. Now, hours later, laying on her cot, his warm body under her and his arm draped over her backside, pinning her to him, Stephanie wondered how long it had been since she’d abandoned her ties and loyalty to earth without knowing it. 

On the main deck she’d cracked, her mind snapping to the reality, to her destiny. She was Lotor’s. There were numerous titles she might hold, but each one was direct. Each title a reflection to whom she belonged. Lotor’s pet- the demure obedient female that would yield to him. Lotor’s Paladin- the fearless, closed off warrior and pilot who would take down Voltron from the inside or, by force. Lotor’s lover- a supple, fertile female who would cater to the prince’s every desire no matter how twisted or depraved. Lotor’s slave- his property that had no rights but the rights he chose to give her.  
Lotor’s love.  
The one title she had no idea what it would entail. His proclamation of love had been in a moment of twisted depravity, in his lust for seeing her emotionally fragile state, in seeing her weak and oh so breakable. But she’d not broken, not entirely.  
She feared she would one day, the day she killed the paladins of Voltron and with it, killed any hope or returning to earth. 

There was also the fact that with her new title came a new, darker and more insidious insulation. If he loved her, he would never give her freedom. He kept things he liked, he kept control over everything he claimed as his own. And while he’d long claimed her, he’d always kept that one day, he’d free her of her chains and let her go, let her return to what she’d wanted to be. Yet now, Stephanie wondered how far his lies went, and where the truth actually lay. He’d said he would never love her yet here they were. She thought she could never love him, yet she’d fallen- broken the walls around her heart and allowed him to take that part of her. 

The soft rise and fall of his chest drew her attention. Soft white hairs tickling her skin as she shifted on top of his body, slipping to a more comfortable position. He was vulnerable with her like this. In the aftermath of their ‘actions’. If she had a weapon like perhaps, the standard galra knife in her uniform not but five feet away, she could kill him. Slit his throat and watch him drown in his own blood. She could stab his heart- recompense for the pain he caused in her own. Stephanie drew in a long breath, letting it leave her slowly as her mind drifted to more morbid things.  
If she really wanted, she could grab the pillow and suffocate him, ending his life without even a drop of blood.

His chest continued is slow steady rise and fall. Lotor remained sleeping, blissfully unaware of how his paladin looked at him with such forlorn sadness. That was her emotion. Sadness. Sad over the fact had they met under different circumstances, she’d love him with every fiber of her being. He was passionate, driven, intelligent, brave, witty- he was all the things she dreamed of. He was all the things she feared.  
Ruthless, malicious, cruel, calculating, distant.   
Distant. Because for all she gave him he gave only a drop of himself in return. She knew nothing of him outside of sex and work. Destroy Voltron. Pleasure him. These were the facets of the prince that had taken her and claimed her as his love.

“You are the worst Lotor.” Stephanie whispered, eyes watering as she looked away from his face.  
“How could you say that?” Her blunt nails dug into his chest as she felt the sting of tears roll down her face. “You’re not supposed to say that.”

“Say what pet?” His reply had her tense. She’d been wrong. He wasn’t asleep. He’d tricked her again it would seem.  
“Tell me why you’re crying.” His hand on her back began to rub soothing circles, the touch more intimate than she’d like. “The only one who had the privilege of causing your tears is me.” He spoke with a touch of jest, yet it only made Stephanie feel her tears become more pronounced. How dare he? How dare he twist her heart, her love like this?  
“You.” The soft muffled reply had no reaction from Lotor, his hand continuing its gentle ministrations on her spine.  
“And what have I done my darling? Are you in pain?” Again, the touch of mirth, of amusement. Her body burned with pain of sex, of the way he’d dominated her after her display. But it was also so numb, so mute when his words echoed in her skull.  
“You said you loved me.” She found her courage, eyes finding his own and she saw something briefly, flash in them. She knew it was not pity, but something that made her nervous.  
She saw a flash of cruelty, just as she’d seen on the deck when he’d told her.

“Oh but I do. You are-“ He hummed, the vibrations in his chest felt under her hands, tickling her body. “You are so perfect. I saw potential but nothing, nothing so brilliant as what you’ve become.” He leaned up trying to catch her face in a kiss.   
He scowled when she turned her head, not wanting to fall back into that comfort, the lie, the illusion of intimacy and caring.  
“I saw you fall to the floor and felt such a desire. You were crumbling, barely kept together as you watched Voltron nearly be ruined- all because of your delightful little plan.” His hand at her back went to her hair, fingers combing out the tangles. “Oh pet, your face. Such anguish, so much raw pain- I wanted to fuck you right then, have you scream as I broke you apart. But then- your eyes. Glittering with tears, they looked like the vibrant sapphires, andbrighter than any star, they made me stop. I was enchanted with your eyes.”  
Stephanie was shaking at each word, each cruel, terrifying admission he said. If he had violated her, she would have broken. She’d have broken and given up and he’d-  
“I realized those eyes should be filled with something other than fear and sadness. I wanted them filled with desire.” His hand pulled her hair, forcing her neck up to face him and look at him. She yielded to the grip, moving as he guided her to sit astride his lap as he sat upright, as she felt him pressing harm and hot into her thigh.

“I want you to look at me with desire, admiration, worship-love. I wanted to break you. To make you into a blindly obedient pet who would obey me and kill the paladins. I thought I could content myself with that.” She shook, his other hand on her hip guiding her up.  
“Your fear was easy to find, to gain. Difficult, but in the end I gained a pet and soldier as I thought I wanted. Yet this other part of you that you fear more, the part of you that you pretend doesn’t exist.” She sunk down onto him, whimpering at the soreness she felt. At the fact she was wet and ready for him, even as she felt fear drawing bile in her throat.  
“I wanted you to love me Stephanie. And now I want you to love me just as much as you hate me.” She screamed, his claws braking skin, his hips hitting her own and he was too deep, too rough, too much-  
“I love you Stephanie.” He growled, and she screamed louder, tears running down her face.   
“I love you,” she closed her eyes as the pain became too much, 

_“I love you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can tell I've chosen to end this story here. I want to continue it (and plan to), but the story itself has segments. Three of them to be exact. This part is of how Lotor basically found Stephanie and molded her into what he wanted. The next part is her fighting between being human and being Lotor's Paladin. Because the show is obviously not over, part 1 had to end at a point early enough to leave material for part 2. Part 3... remains to be seen. But as noted, part 1 is done, Stephanie has fallen in love with her captor, and he has in turn fallen in 'love' with her.   
> I would love to hear suggestions or requests for part 2 if you have any.


End file.
